| 1 | This page lists tropes for the characters in the ''Sunrider'' visual novel series. |
| 2 | |
| 3 | Due to the length of the series and the amount of time that has passed between installments, '''Spoilers for ''Mask of Arcadius'' will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned.''' |
| 4 | ---- |
| 5 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 6 | |
| 7 | !!Sunrider Crew |
| 8 | |
| 9 | [[folder:Kayto Shields]] |
| 10 | !!!Voiced by: Jonathan Michael Cooke (EN) |
| 11 | [[quoteright:256:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kayto_character_ld.jpg]] |
| 12 | [[caption-width-right:256:"Vanguards, Fire!!"]] |
| 13 | |
| 14 | The protagonist. He has been the captain of the Sunrider for less than a day when PACT invades, forcing him to become a figure of the resistance. |
| 15 | ---- |
| 16 | * AlwaysSaveTheGirl: He can adopt this attitude near the end of ''Mask Of Arcadius'' by refusing to let Ava sacrifice herself to take down the Legion, outright declaring that he doesn't care if he dooms humanity, he will ''not'' lose her. It becomes a staple of his personality in later games; [[spoiler: a major plot-point of ''Liberation Day'' is fearing for Chigara's safety when evidence she's a Prototype starts turning up, and his eventual failure to save Chigara severely worsens this need going forward. By the time of ''The Captain's Return'', he outright descends into rabid desperation by attempting a nanite-infusion that would kill him in order to save his crew from Crow Harbor - though it's also his own desire to be TheHero played a role]]. |
| 17 | * ArchEnemy: He comes to see the [[MileLongShip Legion]] as this during ''Mask Of Arcadius'', because it has taken so much from him over the course of the game: his home, his sister, the lives of his crew, his potential victories... By the end of the game he's determined to sink that ship, no matter the cost (or so he thinks, as he can end up choosing Ava's safety over doing so). Come ''Liberation Day'', he comes to see Alice as this for how she masterminded the war that devastated his homeworld - [[spoiler:and after Chigara's death, he sees Fontana as one for killing her. In ''The Captain's Return'', he also comes to see Kuushana as this for constantly hounding him and her commanding an upgraded version of the Sunrider]]. |
| 18 | * AssKickingPose: "Fire the Vanguard Cannon!" |
| 19 | * TheAtoner: ''The Captain's Return'' is about this trope, combined with HesBack. Apart from stopping [[spoiler:Crow Harbor]], the whole game is about him getting his team back together, cleaning up the mess he left behind following [[spoiler:the Liberation Day Massacre]], and slowly pulling himself out of his drunken stupor and RevengeBeforeReason that have consumed him. |
| 20 | * BecomingTheMask: Invoked by Kayto himself in ''The Captain's Return''; [[spoiler:After his torturous experiences as Fontana's prisoner and the Prototype's "guest", he admits he ''wanted'' to evoke this trope after getting into the military - especially after being powerless to stop Cera's fall or save his sister Maray - and become a swashbuckling space-hero straight out of an adventure story. It worked for a while, with everyone generally looking up to him as TheHero, but as time passed it became more a coping mechanism for his SurvivorGuilt and ultimately blinded him to his own fallibility - until finally the Liberation Day Massacre happened and shattered the mask apart, with much of the fourth game being spent trying to rebuild the mask until finally being convinced to let it go]]. |
| 21 | * BlackAndWhiteInsanity: Leans into this trope as the war against PACT raged, which is further reinforced after [[spoiler:Fontana kills Chigara, having him swear revenge against the Veniczar]], where he sees PACT as always evil and those opposing them to be good. Doubles as RevengeBeforeReason as his motivation is primarily born of avenging the massacre of Cera's military and the death of his sister Maray. The forth game has him forced to acknowledge the flaw of this mindset as to why the galaxy started to favor PACT despite its past crimes. [[spoiler:After his brutal interrogation by Fontana and seeing what has become of Chigara and the Prototypes, he lets go of this mindset, only wanting to liberate Cera and stop Fontana from ruling the galaxy.]] |
| 22 | * TheCaptain: Captains the Sunrider and is in charge of commanding all attached forces and the [[WaveMotionGun Vanguard Cannon]]. Later on, he commands the Maray as part of Ryuvia's rebuilding military initiative under Asaga. |
| 23 | * CluelessChickMagnet: He's not ''completely'' oblivious to the various girls crushing on him but, at the very least, he seems to underestimate the effect his kind words can have. |
| 24 | * CosmicPlaything: He starts to feel this way in ''The Captain's Return'' after everything he's been through and some scenes imply he started feeling this way as early-on as ''Mask of Arcadius''. [[spoiler:It only gets worse when he finds out he ''literally was'' a plaything at the hands of Claude, who is a PhysicalGod that took an interest in him - and who made a secret alliance with the Prototypes, actively manipulating events on the Sunrider to push him and Chigara into their ill-fated relationship at the Alpha Prototype's behest. A severe hallucinatory episode near the endgame sees him openly vent about this, angry and afraid at the idea that he has no real agency of his own and any choices he makes will inevitably lead to the same end. By the end of the fourth game, he seems to make an effort at coming to terms with this after accepting that he can't live the rest of his life always fearing what may or may not happen]]. |
| 25 | * ExplainExplainOhCrap: He notices something off about PACT’s tactics during the Second Battle of Cera, questioning why their fleet would try to close with the Alliance fleet[[note]](who have the advantage at short range, thanks to their kinetic weapons)[[/note]] instead of hunkering down and blasting the unshielded Alliance ships from afar with lasers. When Ava explains that the Alliance has brought in shield cruisers to protect their fleet, he suddenly realizes what the enemy is planning: |
| 26 | -->'''Kayto:''' But if all our shields are generated by cruisers, a fleet of smaller craft can… Relay a message to the Alliance fleet. Prepare for Anti-[[AMechByAnyOtherName ryder]] combat.\ |
| 27 | '''Ava:''' Sir?\ |
| 28 | '''Kayto:''' Do it now. (...) Form a defensive line in front of the shield cruisers! [[ZergRush The prototypes intend to sacrifice all their ryders to take them out]]! |
| 29 | * ExpositoryHairstyleChange: Twofold in ''The Captain's Return''; |
| 30 | ** The fourth game starts with Kayto looking like a disheveled bum with shoulder-length hair and PermaStubble, reflecting the drunken depression he's fallen into in the six years since ''Liberation Day''. |
| 31 | ** After reuniting with Asaga, she trims his hair down and he gets a shave; while he looks more like his old self again, his hair still remains a bit longer than it used to - reflecting how he's started returning to form but is also OlderAndWiser than he used to be. |
| 32 | * AFatherToHisMen: Do ''not'' threaten the people under Kayto's command. It will not end well for you. However, this very trait gets [[DeconstructedTrope deconstructed]] in that it [[spoiler:prevents him from accepting Chigara is a Protoype despite mounting evidence. In fact, it leaves him unaware to a number of lies or negative feelings brewing in some of his crew [[note]]to writ, Asaga undergoes SanitySlippage from her powers and [[LoveMakesYouCrazy jealousy]] towards Chigara that briefly makes her turn on everyone; Sola keeps her knowledge of Asaga's mental instability to herself instead of telling Kayto or Ava out of both duty and familial loyalty to Asaga; Kryska actively feeds the Alliance info behind his back before briefly turning on them after the Liberation Day Massacre; Claude was TheMole for the Prototypes who's falsified medical records were Kayto's main justification to ignore Ava's suspicions about Chigara[[/note]]. In ''[RE]turn'' it takes his own future self literally beating some sense into him before he wises up - while in ''The Captain's Return'' his six years of stewing in bitterness takes getting the band back together, getting [[TheReasonYouSuck dressed down by]] Fontana, Lynn and Claude, and lastly a confrontation with the insane Omega Prototype and her Chigara offshoot that nearly gets Asaga killed before he finally accepts there's a difference between stubbornness and resolve]]. |
| 33 | %%* TheFettered: If the player keeps making these sort of decisions. |
| 34 | * GodzillaThreshold: In Chapter 7 of ''The Captain's Return'', [[spoiler:the battle against Crow Harbor goes so badly that Kayto becomes desperate enough to inject himself with Ryuvian nanomachines. He knows that the nanomachines will drive him insane and kill him, but he also knows that they'll give him the Awakening power, which he hopes will be enough to pull off a miracle and save the lives of his crew. Ava stops him before he can go through with it]]. |
| 35 | %%* TheGoodCaptain: Can be played as this. |
| 36 | * HeWhoFightsMonsters: Can dip into this. Depending on player choices, he can make a series of moral compromises, prioritizing military targets over civilian lives. Most notably shown in ''[RE]turn'', where [[spoiler:his past self becomes a {{Jerkass}} who acts as if he’s possessed by the Prototypes]] and several characters [[WhatTheHellHero call him out on it]]; Ava in particular outright calls him insane. |
| 37 | * TheHero: The captain of the Sunrider and later on the Maray, and leader of LaResistance against PACT. [[spoiler:This gets deconstructed in ''Liberation Day'' and especially ''The Captain's Return'', as it's shown how Kayto's need to be a hero stems from wanting to justify being the last surviving captain of Cera's military and the only one left from his destroyed hometown. He even gets called out by Lynn in the fourth game as wanting to live out a hero-fantasy to make himself feel better, which Kayto doesn't deny and ultimately comes to agree with]]. |
| 38 | * HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:At the end of ''Liberation Day'', he [[RammingAlwaysWorks rams the Sunrider]] into an enemy superweapon to save his homeworld. He survives, if only by sheer luck of Lynn's presence and Asana's return]]. |
| 39 | * HeroWithBadPublicity: Became this after ''Liberation Day'', [[spoiler:due to it getting out via Fontana that the (albeit [[DemonicPossession wholly unwilling]]) triggerman for the Liberation Day Massacre was a Prototype who Kayto was banging - and the Solar Alliance isn't a big fan of him anymore for that either, given Admiral Gray and much of their senior leadership were among the casualties. [[MaliciousSlander Not that Fontana was content to stop there]], as he went on to paint Kayto as guilty of every war-crime imaginable; by the time of ''The Captain's Return'', Kayto's been disowned by even his own homeworld of Cera, with its new Prime Minister Miirage Foster rubbing salt in the wound by throwing her personal support behind Fontana and PACT - the very people he spent the first three games trying to free Cera from]]. |
| 40 | * IAmTheNoun: Inverted, as it's another character's describing of Kayto. [[spoiler: In the endgame of ''The Captain's Return'', Kayto has the Maray outrun the shockwave of a newly-born star after launching a bomb into the World Fountain that devastates a huge chunk of the PACT fleet. In the wake of his defeat, Fontana bitterly notes that Kayto "rode the sun to victory" and has ''become'' "the Sunrider" - shifting the title of the game from being the name of Kayto's ship to his own personal epithet]]. |
| 41 | * IHatePastMe: In ''[RE]turn'', a temporally-displaced Kayto quickly grows exasperated with how his past self refuses to even consider the possibility that [[spoiler:Chigara is a Prototype spy]], and apologizes to Ava for his past bullheadedness. [[spoiler:His mainstream self likewise grows into this mindset during ''The Captain's Return'', apologizing to his crew over where his need for validation led them all]]. |
| 42 | * IKnowYoureInThereSomewhereFight: When [[spoiler:Chigara is possessed by Alice and slaughters the people attending the Liberation Day ceremony]], he tries his hardest to break through to her by reminding her of everything they shared. [[spoiler:[[HopeSpot He succeeds]], only for Fontana to gun her down.]] |
| 43 | * KnowWhenToFoldEm: In ''The Captain's Return'', Kayto and his crew are getting their asses kicked by [[spoiler:Crow Harbor's dreadnought]] when Fontana suddenly warps in with the ''entire PACT navy''. The tens of thousands of ships open fire en masse, blowing [[spoiler:Crow]] away. They then point their guns at the Maray. Kayto, knowing his people couldn't fight off this many ships even if they were at full strength, sighs in resignation and asks Fontana to name the terms for his surrender, asking only that his crew be allowed to go free. |
| 44 | * LeaningOnTheFourthWall: ''Sunrider Academy's'' version of Kayto does this a lot, frequently seeming to recognise the difference between his life and that of his main series' counterpart. |
| 45 | * MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Comes up twice in ''The Captain's Return''; |
| 46 | ** [[spoiler:While Kayto and Sola were living together on Tydaria, Kayto--who had become a surly alcoholic by that point--once lashed out at Sola in a drunken rage. He came to his senses once he realized she was crying and immediately tried to apologize, but the damage was already done; Sola fled the house and never came back, leaving him to wallow in his misery.]] |
| 47 | ** [[spoiler:He has this reaction after Asaga nearly pulls a HeroicSacrifice to save him from the Prototypes, lamenting in an emotional breakdown at her bedside about how chasing Qrow Harbor to amend his HeroWithBadPublicity status had only caused problems for everyone]]. |
| 48 | * ObliviousToLove: [[AvertedTrope Averted.]] He certainly appears to be this as the women under his command fall for him in the first half of ''Mask Of Arcadius'' but during the BeachEpisode he reveals he is actually aware of this and was just playing dumb to avoid an InappropriatelyCloseComrades situation. Towards the end of ''Mask Of Arcadius'' he abandons this - [[spoiler:but unfortunately replaces it with obliviousness to the heartbreak Asaga feels when he starts dating Chigara, blinding him to her mental breakdown]]. |
| 49 | * OfficialCouple: He enters a romantic relationship with Chigara in Liberation Day, [[{{Railroading}} regardless of the player's prior choices]]. [[spoiler:[[HoneyTrap Damn Prototypes.]]]] |
| 50 | * OlderAndWiser: [[spoiler:Has shades of this by the end of the fourth game, coming to terms with his mistakes in ''Liberation Day'' and the trauma they caused him - and reconciling with the idea that he can't save everyone or fix everything]]. |
| 51 | * PlaguedByNightmares: After getting captured by Cosette on Ongess and seeing Alliance soldiers gun down a little girl during his rescue, he starts having nightmares in which the child blames him for her death before morphing into his dead sister Maray. [[spoiler: In ''The Captain's Return'', he's very clearly haunted by the Liberation Day Massacre and Chigara's death]]. |
| 52 | * RagsToRoyalty: Kayto starts out as a normal guy from a middle-class background, but in ''The Captain's Return'' he is made an honorary count of Ryuvia. [[spoiler:Asaga's epilogue further sets him up to not only become Ryuvia's official military chief, but also the spouse of the Queen herself]]. |
| 53 | * ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Is usually this to his crew, ''[RE]turn'' being [[TookALevelInJerkass a notable exception]] as he slips into denial over mounting evidence (secretly provided by his future-self) towards Chigara being a Prototype. |
| 54 | * RebelLeader: Leads the battle against PACT. |
| 55 | * RetGone: [[spoiler:Almost every ending in [RE]turn has his time-travelling future self be erased from existence]]. |
| 56 | * RightForTheWrongReasons: [[spoiler:He wasn't actually wrong about Chigara being genuinely loyal to him and the crew. But he believed it was because the Prototypes were lying about Chigara being one of them, rather than her being a ManchurianAgent who simply wasn't aware of her true nature]]. |
| 57 | * ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight: Can dip into this depending on player choices. When Ava tries to dissuade him from joining a rescue team by quoting regulations from a rulebook, he has the option to yank it out of her hands and rip it apart. [[ButThouMust There is no option to agree with her and sit the rescue out]]. |
| 58 | * SecretlySelfish: invoked directly in ''Liberation Day'', ''[RE]turn'' and ''The Captain's Return''; |
| 59 | ** In ''Liberation Day'', [[spoiler:after barely surviving the Sunrider's destruction thanks to Lynn and Asaga, one of Kayto's dialogue choices can have him tearfully confess to his crew that he basically fell into a relationship with Chigara as a coping mechanism for his stress and loneliness. This infers that, while he did very much care about her and committed himself to making her happy in turn, their actual hooking-up was more out of timing and need for support than love and (as gets noted in ''The Captain's Return'') could alternatively be seen as having taken advantage of her feelings]]. |
| 60 | ** In ''[RE]Turn'', Kayto openly calls himself this - literally, as's talking to (and punching out) his past self at that moment - and finally admits that he chose to throw himself into the happy dreams of normalcy Chigara wanted because he was just that afraid to keep going on alone. |
| 61 | ** In ''The Captain's Return'', Lynn accuses Kayto of being a selfish glory hound who's endangering the lives of his crew on a foolhardy hunt for [[spoiler:Crow Harbor]] because punching out the big bad warlord will restore his tattered reputation - both in other's eyes and his own. He ends up affirming as much in a moment of weakness when backed into a corner, [[spoiler:preparing to take a dangerous nanite injection while ranting that he's going to take Crow down and show his detractors that ''he'' is the savior of humanity. While Ava does manage to pull him back from the edge, owning up to it ultimately takes Asaga nearly killing herself to rescue Kayto from his back-to-back captures by Fontana and the Prototypes, with Kayto confessing to a bedridden Asaga that he'd used them all as a means of rebuilding his own pedestal]]. |
| 62 | * ShipperOnDeck: Kayto is of the opinion that Kryska and Icari are more than just friends, and in ''Sunrider 4'' jumps to the conclusion that they're having sex after he offers advice on how they can improve her relationship... and being disappointed to discover they're just working out together when he tries to peep on them. |
| 63 | * StopOrIShootMyself: In ''Sunrider 4'', [[spoiler:when the Prototypes refuse to let him leave the Cathedral, Kayto grabs one of Omega's spider limbs and presses the claw up against his throat, telling them that he ''will'' kill himself unless they let him go. They relent and let him run for the escape pods, though "Chigara?" gives chase as soon as he's off the ship]]. |
| 64 | * TheStrategist: An understated example, but his tactical acumen ends up saving the day more than once in cutscenes; of course, whether his tactics are as brilliant during gameplay will depend on the player's skill. He practically saves the Alliance during the battle of Far Port, realizing that Cullen is used to relying on overwhelming force and unprepared to deal with a decapitating strike. He then does it again at the battle of Cera, cluing in to the enemy fleet's plan to destroy the shield generators using a wave of ryders. |
| 65 | * SummonBiggerFish: In Chapter 10 of ''Sunrider 4'', the Maray and its Ryders go up against the ten thousand ships of the PACT Crimson Fleet. Kayto was counting on the Solar Alliance to send an expeditionary force to back them up, but when it doesn't arrive, he switches to plan B: [[spoiler:summon the Prototypes, who promptly show up in a super-dreadnought powerful enough to bog down most of the Crimson Fleet singlehandedly]]. |
| 66 | * SurvivorGuilt: Though Kayto does a good job of hiding it, he feels immense guilt for abandoning Cera to PACT at the start of the story (even though he knows there was nothing his one ship could do to stop the [[MileLongShip Legion]]) and is haunted by the ghost of his sister Maray, who was in Cera's capital when the Legion nuked it from orbit. It later comes to a head when he seeks to rekindle an old romance with Ava out of a need for emotional stability - and when she turns him down, he becomes [[LivingEmotionalCrutch attached to Chigara instead]]. ''The Captain's Return'' then adds his surviving the Liberation Day Massacre, [[spoiler:the destruction of the Sunrider and outliving Chigara]] to the list. |
| 67 | * TookALevelInJerkass: In ''[RE]turn'', where his past self refuses to believe the increasingly obvious truth of [[spoiler:Chigara]] being a spy and antagonizes any crew members who confront him about it, instead accusing [[SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong future Kayto]] of being the [[spoiler:Prototype]] spy. ''The Captain's Return'' has him also dip into moments of this, the game itself starting with Kayto as a bitter alcoholic miner on a backwater world who feels everyone has abandoned him and generally more jaded after being AFatherToHisMen saw him get little but heartache in return. |
| 68 | * TragicKeepsake: The tea set he keeps in his quarters was a gift from his sister Maray. Finding it shattered after yet another attack from the Legion [[ManlyTears causes him to break down crying]]. |
| 69 | * WhatYouAreInTheDark: |
| 70 | ** In ''Sunrider 4'', [[spoiler:after the Prototypes free Kayto from PACT's clutches, Omega offers him everything he's ever wanted: the most powerful starship in the galaxy, the slavish adoration of herself and the other Prototypes, and the chance to defeat all his enemies, save all his friends, and fix all his past mistakes. All of this can be his, if only he gives the word]]. Kayto is sorely tempted by this offer after everything he's been through, but he refuses. |
| 71 | --->'''Kayto:''' I wanted to win... I wanted to win! Against Crow! Against Fontana! Against Canon! I felt... so weak! So... useless! Then I thought... if only I had power! Then I wouldn't be like this! I wouldn't be weak! I wanted power. Power to change everything! Because there's so much I want to change! So much... so much that needs... to change. But...! I can't! I... I just... can't! ...! ... ... ... I want to return home. Let me go. If you truly serve me, release me. |
| 72 | ** [[spoiler:To an extent, this can also be argued as where [RE]turn fits into the story as Claude's own attempt to give him wish-fulfillment, indulging him in chances to change things and 'get it right' - with it being shown how quickly and easy he falls into relying heavily on a different girl in his crew, practically putting whatever he felt for Chigara in the past out of his mind in the name of rectifying his missteps]]. |
| 73 | * WhiteHairBlackHeart: His past self dips into this in ''[RE]turn''; while not evil, he starts being a {{Jerkass}} [[spoiler:until his future self snaps him out of it]]. In ''The Captain's Return'', he's seemingly collapsed into this as a bitter alcoholic in the six years since ''Liberation Day'', [[spoiler:with a flashback revealing he'd even driven Sola away in a drunken rage one night. It takes an assassin-droid attack (orchestrated by Claude) and Sola's coming back to save him to snap him out of his funk, and he spends most of the fourth game struggling not to slip fully into RevengeBeforeReason before finally putting his demons to rest just before the endgame]]. |
| 74 | [[/folder]] |
| 75 | |
| 76 | [[folder:Ava Crescentia]] |
| 77 | !!!Voiced by: Creator/AmberLeeConnors (EN); Kisumi Aoi (JP, ''Liberation Day''), Maki Tomonaga (credited as Himari) (JP, ''The Captain's Return'') |
| 78 | [[quoteright:335:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ava_crescentia_2019.jpg]] |
| 79 | [[caption-width-right:335:"Your orders, Captain?"[[labelnote:Click here to see Ava as she appears in Liberation Day]] https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ava_character_ld_2.png[[/labelnote]]]] |
| 80 | |
| 81 | A childhood friend of the captain and one year his senior, Ava Crescentia served as an older sister figure to Kayto for much of his early life. Reunited after eight years of separation as her superior officer, Kayto’s new relationship with Ava can only be called awkward. Ava’s uncompromising professionalism is matched only by her cold willingness to do whatever is necessary to win the war. |
| 82 | ---- |
| 83 | * AbusiveParents: Her father was rarely home during Ava’s teenage years, leaving her to fend for herself. And when he was home, he showed her little affection and would discipline her for her shortcomings. In ''Sunrider Academy'' this discipline sometimes involved handcuffing Ava and beating her with a rod, though it's unclear if this applies to the main universe. Despite this, Ava bears him no ill will. |
| 84 | * AloofDarkHairedGirl: She's tall, beautiful, has waist-length brown hair, and maintains a professional distance from the rest of the crew. |
| 85 | * AnArmAndALeg: If she goes through with the below-mentioned HeroicSacrifice, her right arm gets blown off when a console explodes next to her. The Sunrider's medical suite is able to regenerate her arm by Liberation Day, but she'll wear a glove until the new arm's skin tone matches the rest of her body. Come ''The Captain's Return'', her new arm's become indistinguishable from the old one. |
| 86 | * AnguishedDeclarationOfLove: [[spoiler:Following the Liberation Day massacre, she [[TenderTears tearfully]] admits to Kayto that she lied about not remembering their promise to sail the stars together and that she should have been more honest with her feelings. While she stops short of actually saying that she loves him, Kayto recognizes her intent.]] |
| 87 | * BreakHisHeartToSaveHim: She does this to Kayto toward the end of ''Mask of Arcadius'' in an effort to snap him out of his funk after a disastrous run-in with the Legion leaves him maudlin and yearning for the love they once shared. Specifically, she tells him that she doesn’t remember the promise they made to sail the stars together back in high school. [[spoiler:It’s not until the very end of ''Liberation Day'', [[NiceJobBreakingItHero after it’s already backfired horribly]], that she can admit she was lying about that.]] |
| 88 | * CantRefuseTheCallAnymore: When Kayto comes to ask her help in taking down [[spoiler:Crow Harbor]] in ''Sunrider 4'', she initially says no. She believes that the threat [[spoiler:Crow]] poses is real, but she has a responsibility to the Ceran people as their acting prime minister, and she can't just abandon that responsibility to go gallivanting around the galaxy. Then Veniczar Fontana springs a trap for Kayto, and Ava gets swept aboard the Maray in the confusion. Once they're out of danger, Ava realizes that the damage has already been done and settles back into her role as the ship's [=XO=]. |
| 89 | * TheCaptain: While Kayto is captain of the Sunrider as a military unit, Ava is the flag captain of the ship itself and commands it in battle. |
| 90 | * CaptainSmoothAndSergeantRough: The Sergeant Rough. She admits to being a poor leader who's never been able to make friends easily, something that clearly bugs her. The crew still looks up to her, however, even if they think she could loosen up a little. |
| 91 | * CatchPhrase: |
| 92 | -->Absolutely unbelievable... |
| 93 | * ChildhoodFriendRomance: She grew up with Kayto and the two of them started a relationship in high school, but eight years of separation and military regulations against fraternization keep them from resuming it. She can become a Victorious Childhood Friend in ''Sunrider Academy'' and in the ''[RE]turn'' scenario. |
| 94 | * DaChief: She even firmly reprimands Kayto on several occasions, despite him outranking her. The others get even less consideration. |
| 95 | * DeadSparks: Ava and Kayto had a close relationship before she left for the navy, but they drifted apart from a lack of contact. |
| 96 | * ExtraTurn: Ava's final Sunrider 4 affection perk unlocks the All Hands On Deck order, which--amongst other things--fully replenishes the Maray's Energy so it can keep taking actions this turn. |
| 97 | * EyeScream: If she goes through with the below-mentioned HeroicSacrifice, she’ll lose her right eye when a console blows up in her face. Admiral Gray does requisition a prosthetic replacement for her, but the events of ''Liberation Day'' keep her from getting it until after the game's events. |
| 98 | * EyepatchOfPower: If she went through with her HeroicSacrifice in ''Mask of Arcadius'', she receives a bionic eye resembling an eyepatch to replace the one she lost and wears it throughout the third game. By the time of ''The Captain's Return'' though, she'll have ditched the eyepiece for a replacement eye that [[CuttingOffTheBranches looks indistinguishable from her old one]]. |
| 99 | * {{Facepalm}}: Whenever she utters her CatchPhrase. |
| 100 | * FashionableAsymmetry: Her new uniform in ''Sunrider 4'' includes a stylish cape which only covers one shoulder. |
| 101 | * FirstGirlWins: If the player reaches her good end in ''[RE]turn''. |
| 102 | * FirstLove: Ava was the first person Kayto loved, though twelve years of separation and the fact that they’re now officers aboard a military starship has made resuming their relationship unlikely. [[spoiler:At first…]] |
| 103 | * HeroicSacrifice: Depending on her choices, you can inspire her to do this to allow the Sunrider to destroy the Legion. She'll survive, but not unscathed. |
| 104 | %%* HimeCut |
| 105 | * HyperCompetentSidekick: Ava seems to do most of the day to day work keeping the ''Sunrider'' going. Also worth noting is that on ''[RE]turn'' [[spoiler: Sola, Asaga and Icari still need some help from Ava late in their routes to win while Ava is able to manage by herself.]] |
| 106 | * TheILoveYouStigma: Even in her happy ends in ''[RE]turn'' and ''Sunrider Academy'' she never quite feels able to tell Kayto she loves him, even when it's hardly a secret. |
| 107 | * InappropriatelyCloseComrades: She refuses to renew her past relationship with Kayto in part because of this, fearing that to do so would compromise his judgment. She's proven right if you refuse to let her go through with the above HeroicSacrifice, [[spoiler:sacrificing your one chance to finally destroy the Legion]] because Kayto can't bear to lose her. |
| 108 | * InsecureLoveInterest: Shades of this [[spoiler: at the happy end of her ''[RE]turn'' route. Despite deciding to enter into an actual relationship with Kayto she worries that she's not emotionally available enough for it to work. For his part Kayto has no such concerns.]] |
| 109 | * InsultOfEndearment: She calls Kayto "Idiot" but only when she's not really mad. When she ''is'' really mad she's icily formal. |
| 110 | * InterruptedDeclarationOfLove: In ''Sunrider 4'', [[spoiler:when all hope seems lost during the battle against Crow Harbor, Ava gently tells a despairing Kayto that the only thing that matters is that the two of them will be together in their final moments. She then starts to say that she still loves him, but Veniczar Fontana cuts her off before she can finish and pulls a VillainousRescue]]. |
| 111 | * MissionControl: She's the ''Sunrider''[='=]s XO, managing the crew during missions. |
| 112 | * MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Implied; [[spoiler:In the epilogue of ''Liberation Day'', Ava tearfully apologizes to Kayto for lying about not recalling their promise to see space together, implying she felt responsible for how this - in conjunction with rejecting the love-confession Kayto made in a moment of weakness - drove him into [[HoneyTrap Chigara's]] arms instead of snapping him out of his mental spiral]]. |
| 113 | * NiceJobBreakingItHero: [[spoiler:Ava harshly rejecting Kayto's love confession caused the heartbreak that made him accept Chigara's affections - with him becoming so reliant on her emotional validation that he refused to accept she could be a Prototype until she was [[DemonicPossession taken over by Alice]] to cause the Liberation Day Massacre. Ava herself seems to recognize this by the end of ''Liberation Day'' and, combined with her subsequent stint as Cera's Prime Minister, it seemingly helped her realize that her brusque approach and attempt at limiting ties could hurt far more than it helped]]. |
| 114 | * NumberTwo: As the ''Sunrider'''s XO, she's in charge of managing the crew's day-to-day operations and keeping discipline tight. In battle, she controls the ''Sunrider'' directly to leave the Captain free to direct the overall battle plan. |
| 115 | * ObstructiveBureaucrat: She’s a bit too rigid in getting everyone to follow rules and regulations, especially in ''Academy'' when she’s constantly forcing paperwork onto Kayto. |
| 116 | * OnlySaneWoman |
| 117 | -->I swear, why do all the ryder pilots in the galaxy have to have such crippling personality defects! I honestly can't believe we're entrusting fusion powered weapons of mass destruction to these people! |
| 118 | ** [[SubvertedTrope Granted, she has her own quirks]], mainly bothering everyone by being a hardass ObstructiveBureaucrat. [[spoiler:''Liberation Day'' also sees her write off her suspicions on Chigara being a Prototype despite the obvious resemblances, partly due to Kayto trusting [[TheMole Claude's]] word and partly due to hopes of letting Chigara make Kayto move on from his lingering feelings for Ava]]. |
| 119 | * PleaseDontLeaveMe: In her epilogue for the fourth game, [[spoiler:a somewhat buzzed Ava admits that she missed Kayto during the six years they were apart and asks him never to leave her side again. He promises her that he won't, leading her to pass out with a contented smile]]. |
| 120 | * PragmaticHero: A downplayed example. While Ava is focused on reclaiming Cera from PACT and advocates missions that will further the war effort over general heroics like freeing slaves and busting pirates, she respects Kayto's decisions and will go along with whatever mission he chooses without complaint. ''[RE]Turn'' shows this off more straightforwardly as, upon getting hard proof [[spoiler:Claude falsified Chigara's medical records and that the latter is indeed a Prototype]], Ava gets increasingly outspoken against Kayto's refusal to acknowledge the possible danger. |
| 121 | * ReducedResourceCost: Her Ship Clean Up perks give the Maray a chance to not expend ammo when firing its missiles and torpedoes. Her Viva La Resistance II perk lets you summon a Ceran gunship for free when you don't already have any gunships summoned. |
| 122 | * StudentCouncilPresident: She was this in high school. She wanted to bring about change for the student body, but her strict and uncompromising leadership only alienated the rest of the council (except for Kayto) and she failed to achieve anything during her tenure. The experience made her decide that she's not cut out for leadership. |
| 123 | * SugarAndIcePersonality: Played with. She's nowhere near the polarizing interactions Icari can have, but it's still evident that she's got a softer side in private with Kayto when compared to her [[ObstructiveBureaucrat usual attitude]] on the Sunrider's bridge. |
| 124 | * SummonMagic: Her ''Sunrider 4'' affection chart contains Orders which let you summon [[PlayerMooks generic friendlies]] to assist you mid-battle. These friendlies stick around until they get shot down or until the battle is over, then leave. |
| 125 | * TookALevelInKindness: The early games present Ava as being such an uptight workaholic and disciplinarian that she had a small breakdown when the crew took some well-earned shore leave because everyone was goofing off and nothing was getting done. Come ''The Captain's Return'', Ava has mellowed out considerably. She encourages the crew to stop and enjoy themselves at an Astrium bar, telling a stunned Kayto that they've earned some downtime after their actions in the Denari Expanse. Later, she admits to Kayto that her time as Cera's prime minister taught her that being a hard-ass 24/7 doesn't make for effective leadership. [[spoiler:Though her experiences with Kayto and the crew of the Sunrider - including the disastrous results of trying to BreakHisHeartToSaveHim - could be inferred as contributors in their own right]]. |
| 126 | * UnprovokedPervertPayback: Subverted in her ending of ''The Captain's Return'', when Kayto accidentally walks in on her while she's in a nightgown. Kayto clearly expects her to yell at him or make him fill out sexual harassment paperwork, but to his surprise, she lets it slide. |
| 127 | -->'''Ava:''' Sigh... Calm down, Kayto. It's nothing you haven't seen before.\ |
| 128 | '''Kayto:''' Wait… what? You're... not gonna yell at me?\ |
| 129 | '''Ava:''' No, captain. Sigh... I am getting quite too old for those antics. |
| 130 | * WellDoneSonGuy: Despite how difficult her father is it's evident she desparately seeks his approval. In the main series and every route but her own in ''Academy'' she joins the Cera Space Force in order to achieve this. [[spoiler: She breaks out of this in her own route, deciding to enter politics instead, at least in part so she can stay with Kayto.]] |
| 131 | * WhenSheSmiles: Ava's generally serious in tone but her rare smiles are quite endearing. In ''Academy'' Kayto even jokes about it. |
| 132 | --> My favourite thing about her is her smile. It's a shame I've never seen it. |
| 133 | * {{Workaholic}}: As a teenager and StudentCouncilPresident, she once brought paperwork to an outing at the beach. As an adult and the Sunrider’s NumberTwo, she is so much of a workaholic that ''not'' being able to work due to shore leave causes her to have a minor breakdown and Kayto has to ''order'' her to relax during their leave. Justified, as her father was a strict military man who constantly pushed her to work harder. |
| 134 | [[/folder]] |
| 135 | |
| 136 | !!Ryder Pilots |
| 137 | |
| 138 | [[folder:Asaga Oakrun]] |
| 139 | !!!Voiced by: Creator/KiraBuckland (EN), Sakura Matsuri (JP) |
| 140 | [[quoteright:335:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/asaga_oakrun_6149.jpg]] |
| 141 | [[caption-width-right:335:"A hero of justice!"[[labelnote:Click here to see Asaga as she appears in Liberation Day]] https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/asaga_character_ld_2.png[[/labelnote]]]] |
| 142 | |
| 143 | A self declared hero of justice, Asaga wanders the galaxy doing oddjobs for the cause of freedom, justice, and a little money on the side. Despite her apparent lack of maturity, she is an ace pilot and can fly as easily as she walks. She possesses an eternally optimistic disposition and has a strong “can do” attitude. |
| 144 | |
| 145 | Asaga pilots the Black Jack, a heavily-armed Ryder whose varied arsenal makes it a good fit for almost any situation. In ''Sunrider 4'' she replaces it with the High Roller, which is functionally very similar. |
| 146 | ---- |
| 147 | * AcePilot: She's even referred to as such in-universe. She fits the Steamroller type, able to take out almost any enemy in a head-on engagement. |
| 148 | * TheAllegedBoss: In ''The Captain's Return'', [[spoiler:Asaga dubs Kayto an honorary Ryuvian count. In theory, this makes Asaga both his queen and his commander-in-chief, and she should be giving Kayto his marching orders. In practice, she leaves all the military planning and decision-making to Kayto, who she admits is much better suited for that stuff anyway]]. |
| 149 | * ArrangedMarriage: In two different universes no less! |
| 150 | ** In the main series her father attempts to pursuade Arcadius not to attack Ryuvia by marrying off Asaga to him. |
| 151 | ** The ''Academy'' version of him arranges a marriage to his old friend, that universe's version of Cullen, although in that case he may not have been all that serious about it. |
| 152 | * AutoRevive: Her penultimate affection perk, The Hero, lets her resurrect herself at full health once per battle. |
| 153 | * BeamSpam: Her usual long range weaponry is almost entirely laser based, though she can acquire kinetic weaponry from the Union store in ''Liberation Day.'' |
| 154 | * BigDamnKiss: [[spoiler:Gets one in her epilogue of ''The Captain's Return'', after she effectively proposes to Kayto with her offer to make him co-ruler of her people]]. |
| 155 | * CastFromHitPoints: Her Awaken SuperMode costs 100 hit points to activate, and consumes an increasing amount of Asaga's HP for every turn that it stays on. |
| 156 | * CriticalStatusBuff: Her Final Stand perk gives her weapons a chance to deal double damage while she's below 25% of her maximum HP. |
| 157 | * DamageIncreasingDebuff: The Melt Armor upgrade for the High Roller's pulse gun makes its shots reduce the target's armor value, making it take increased damage from that side for the remainder of the fight. |
| 158 | * EleventhHourSuperpower: She unlocks the same [[SuperMode Awaken]] skill as Sola during the final battle in ''Mask of Arcadius''. Becomes a SecondHourSuperpower in ''Liberation Day'', where she gets the ability during the game's second mission. |
| 159 | * ExtraTurn: ''Sunrider 4''[='=]s version of the Awaken skill sacrifices some of Asaga's hit points to fully replenish the High Roller's energy meter. This won't let her move again if she's already done so, but it otherwise lets her take multiple turns' worth of actions in one turn. |
| 160 | * FieryRedhead: She's red-haired, outspoken, tomboyish, and a self-proclaimed Hero of Justice as well as an ace mecha pilot. For bonus points, her best friend Chigara is a ShyBlueHairedGirl. |
| 161 | * FirstEpisodeSpoiler: Asaga's true identity as the crown princess of Ryuvia was a big twist in the first game, but subsequent games and promotional materials have made no effort to hide it. |
| 162 | * HavingABlast: Her Fury perk makes the High Roller release an explosion of energy whenever she uses Awakening, damaging all nearby enemy units. |
| 163 | * GenkiGirl: She's the most energetic Ryder pilot in your team, a self-styled "hero of justice" prone to spouting off lines like "I'ma firin' mah lazors!" in the middle of combat, and a constant annoyance to Ava because of her lack of discipline and her attempts to gamble with the crew during her downtime. Even after a six-year timeskip and becoming the Queen of Ryuvia in ''The Captain's Return'', she's still pretty excitable and girlish in her mannerisms. |
| 164 | * GreenEyedMonster: She starts developing a resentment toward Chigara during ''Liberation Day'', both because her heroics are starting to overshadow Asaga's own and because of how close Chigara and Kayto are becoming. [[spoiler:When she catches the two of them having sex, [[LoveMakesYouCrazy she starts]] [[MurderTheHypotenuse to snap]].]] |
| 165 | * TheHero: What she thinks she is. and an argument could be made for it, if not for the player character being TheCaptain. She's the one who tends to do flashy, heroic things in battle, and she serves as flight leader for your squadron. |
| 166 | * HeroicRROD: Like Sola, tapping into her latent Sharr abilities will boost her strength, reflexes and piloting skills to superhuman levels, while placing great strain on her body and mind. [[GameplayAndStoryIntegration This is demonstrated in-game with how her]] SuperMode [[CastFromHitPoints works]]. |
| 167 | * IdiotHair: Has a large ahoge in ''Sunrider Academy'', emphasizing her ditzy GenkiGirl personality. Her main universe counterpart gains one in ''Liberation Day'' thanks to ArtEvolution, though it’s inconsistently applied[[note]](It shows up in the CGs, but it’s conspicuously absent from her sprites)[[/note]]. |
| 168 | * ImTakingHerHomeWithMe: Asaga has this reaction to Maray in ''Sunrider Academy,'' to the concern of the latter (she's only two years younger than Asaga in that continuity). |
| 169 | * KingIncognito: This freelance Ryder pilot and self-proclaimed hero of justice is really the crown princess of Ryuvia. |
| 170 | * LetsGetDangerous: Tends to come across as an IdiotHero off duty, but during actual combat remains remarkably professional bar her silly catchphrases. |
| 171 | * LiteralSplitPersonality: [[spoiler:Subverted; While initially framed as a Jekyll-and-Hyde dynamic with Asaga talking to a colder-sounding reflection, [RE]turn reveals abusing her Awakening power so soon after first getting it was eroding Asaga's sanity to the point she started hallucinating]]. |
| 172 | * LoveConfession: In her ending of ''The Captain's Return'', [[spoiler:Asaga all but asks Kayto to marry her when she tells him her plans to re-establish Ryuvia's presence in the galaxy as the Holy Ryuvian Alliance, asking him to lead it alongside her as the Emperor to her Empress. She tells him that he doesn't have to answer right now, since they have a long way to go before these plans can become reality, but he promises that he'll take her up on that once peace has been restored to the galaxy - and Asaga seals the promise with a BigDamnKiss]]. |
| 173 | * LoveMakesYouCrazy: Her sanity faces a major test in ''Liberation Day'', thanks to her unrequited feelings for Shields and the mental instability brought on by her newly-awakened powers. What makes it worse is that [[spoiler:her paranoia is [[ProperlyParanoid not entirely unfounded...]]]] |
| 174 | * LoveTriangle: During Liberation Day, she and Chigara both end up falling for Kayto, but Kayto only has eyes for Chigara. This puts strain on both the two girls' friendship and Asaga's already-fraying sanity. |
| 175 | * MagicalEye: Just like Sola, Asaga's eyes begin to glow when she taps into her Sharr powers. |
| 176 | * MakingLoveInAllTheWrongPlaces: ''Academy's'' version of Asaga has a real thing for public indecency. |
| 177 | * ManaBurn: The Disruptor specialization for the High Roller's Pulse guns has an upgrade which lets them deplete the target's Energy on top of inflicting damage, limiting what the target can do on its next turn. Fully upgrading this specialization lets her strip away 5 Energy per shot and fire 20 shots per burst, ensuring that most enemies will have little to no energy left if all the shots connect. |
| 178 | * MildlyMilitary: Which gets her in constant trouble with Ava. Who you support is up to you. |
| 179 | * MurderTheHypotenuse: [[spoiler:She attempts to kill Chigara in a fit of jealousy and paranoia toward the end of ''Liberation Day'', only for Claude to talk her out of it.]] |
| 180 | * MyGodWhatHaveIDone: [[spoiler:Her reaction when Claude snaps Asaga out of her temporary insanity, after which it hits her she just tried to murder her best friend out of petty jealousy and was willing to go through her comrades - including the man she loved - to do so. It gets even worse when Claude seemingly bites it because she was distracted with talking down Asaga, leaving Asaga so heartbroken that it contributes to her leaving the crew and returning to Ruvia]]. |
| 181 | * RebelliousPrincess: She ran away to avoid ArrangedMarriage with the BigBad. |
| 182 | * RescueRomance: She develops feelings for Kayto after he rescues her from her wedding ceremony to [[BigBad Arcadius]]. |
| 183 | * RightForTheWrongReasons: [[spoiler:She turns out to right about Chigara's being a Prototype agent meant to manipulate Kayto's heart, but it wasn't out of malign intent like she thought; Chigara [[ManchurianAgent didn't know]] what she was, truly did fall for Kayto and her eventual betrayal was [[DemonicPossession completely unwilling]]. The same applies to thinking Chigara stole Kayto's heart out from under her; while that ''technically'' did happen, it was more sheer luck in timing than anything else with coming in right after Ava [[BreakHisHeartToSaveHim rejected Kayto's desperate, stress-induced confession to her]]]]. |
| 184 | * SanitySlippage: In ''Liberation Day'' her suspicions about [[spoiler:Chigara being a Prototype sent to spy on and manipulate Kayto, coupled with her overuse of her Sharr powers, cause her to develop a "[[KnightTemplar justice]]"-obsessed SuperPoweredEvilSide]]. |
| 185 | * SplitPersonality: [[spoiler:Seemingly develops one as a consequence of overusing her SuperMode in ''Liberation Day''. While the normal Asaga is a cheerful GenkiGirl, this new personality is a merciless KnightTemplar obsessed with meting out “justice” to the entire galaxy, and when not in control it will push Asaga to kill anyone it considers to be evil. ''Liberation Day'' and ''[RE]turn'' later elaborate that it's less a traditional split and more a sort of psychosis, brought about by the mental and physical stress of her initial awakenings]]. |
| 186 | * SuperMode: Her Awaken skill, which works a bit differently from Sola's version. Instead of increasing her stats by a flat amount for a set duration, Asaga's version of Awaken lasts indefinitely and the effect gets stronger with every turn that it's active, [[CastFromHitPoints while also draining an increasing amount of her hit points every turn]]. |
| 187 | * SuperpoweredEvilSide: Asaga's SuperMode erodes her sanity and leads to her becoming increasingly jealous and violent, twisting her into a KnightTemplar. |
| 188 | * TakingYouWithMe: If you choose to let her [[spoiler:kill Chigara]] in [RE]turn mode, Asaga will [[RammingAlwaysWorks ram her crippled Black Jack into]] [[spoiler:the Liberty]], killing them both. |
| 189 | * WalkingArmory: The Black Jack is armed with almost every type of weapon in the game; it only lacks Kinetics and Rockets, and in Liberation Day you can add Kinetics to the Black Jack by purchasing them from the Mining Union. |
| 190 | * WhatTheHellHero: Downplayed, but she really isn't cool with letting the children on the Agamemnon die, since she signed up to ''protect'' people, not just fight PACT. |
| 191 | * {{Yandere}}: In ''Liberation Day'' her friendship with Chigara crumbles due to their mutual attraction to Kayto, [[spoiler:her suspicion that Chigara is one of the Prototypes, and the effects of repeatedly using her Awakening ability -- leading to Asaga snapping and trying to MurderTheHypotenuse]]. |
| 192 | * YouAreTheTranslatedForeignWord: She's the Sharr of Ryuvia. |
| 193 | |
| 194 | [[/folder]] |
| 195 | |
| 196 | [[folder:Chigara Lynn Ashada]] |
| 197 | !!!Voiced by: Mary Morgan (EN), Yomogi Kasumi (JP) |
| 198 | [[quoteright:335:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/chigara_ashada_920.jpg]] |
| 199 | [[caption-width-right:335:"Ah! Captain?"[[labelnote:Click here to see Chigara as she appears in Liberation Day]]https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/63c21941_c991_4bfa_beb0_4f62b4c11970.png[[/labelnote]]]] |
| 200 | |
| 201 | Shy and bookish, Chigara prefers tinkering with gadgets over most forms of human interaction. She has a bashful but cute personality and prefers to avoid the spotlight if at all possible. However, Chigara’s savant level intelligence and her innate talent with technology places her at the center of attention. Notwithstanding her talents, Chigara’s dream in life is to open a bakery shop and assume a life of normalcy… far away from any galactic heroics. |
| 202 | |
| 203 | Chigara's Ryder is the Liberty, a fragile and lightly-armed machine that can support its allies with shielding, in-battle repairs, and {{Status Buff}}s. |
| 204 | ---- |
| 205 | * ACupAngst: At one point, she worries about having to compete for the Captain's attention with [[BuxomBeautyStandard Claude's boobs]]. |
| 206 | * AmbiguousSituation: [[spoiler:While its strongly implied that Chigara chose for herself to love Kayto, her interactions in the Prototype midstream imply her initial attraction was a suggestion they implanted in her and it's not made fully clear how much of her feelings were her own or not. It's also not clear whether she really died when Fontana shot her in ''Liberation Day'' and her memory's impact on the hive-mind drove Alice even crazier than before - or if her mind survived only to [[DeathOfPersonality lose it's individually]] via merging with Alice's]]. |
| 207 | * CameBackWrong: Played with; [[spoiler:Her and Alice's wills [[FusionDance blending together]] in the Prototype hive-mind created an insane mutant abomination in the form of the Omega Prototype and an obsessed stalker in the form of the Widow Ryder's pilot. Whether or not one or both are actually an extension of Chigara or just something inheriting the remnants of her memories isn't clear, but either way they act as a far cry from how Chigara wished to be or be remembered. Doubles as DeathOfPersonality, as it's implied Omega and the Aberrant Prototype are new individuals born from a mix-and-match of Chigara and Alice's memories]]. |
| 208 | %%* CuteClumsyGirl |
| 209 | * DemonicPossession: [[spoiler:She's taken over by Arcadius/Alice during the Liberation Day ceremony, causing her to unwillingly massacre the assembled delegates.]] |
| 210 | * DiedInYourArmsTonight: Because of the above, [[spoiler:Fontana shoots her and she dies in Kayto's arms]]. |
| 211 | * DyingAsYourself: [[spoiler:Thanks to Kayto's efforts, she dies free of Alice's control. Unfortunately, it's implied to be subverted in the stinger for ''Liberation Day'' and the events of ''The Captain's Return'' as her mind - or at the very least her memories - were absorbed into Alice and the Prototype's mindstream, either driving them insane or causing DeathOfPersonality for both as what was left became the [[{{Yandere}} deranged]] Omega and her Aberrant elite]]. |
| 212 | * GadgeteerGenius: She built the Black Jack and the Liberty herself, and quickly establishes herself as the ''Sunrider's'' Chief Engineer. |
| 213 | * HoneyTrap: [[spoiler:The Prototypes want Chigara and Shields to fall in love so that they can maneuver him into a position of power and manipulate him through her. Chigara herself knew nothing of this and is horrified when she finds out the truth of her creation as Prototype [=C8=]]]. |
| 214 | * IJustWantToBeNormal: A downplayed example. Chigara is both a skilled Ryder pilot and a brilliant scientist whose inventions could be worth a fortune if she sold them, but all she really wants is to open a bakery and raise a family. [[spoiler:This can likewise be inferred as a big part of why she didn't believe herself to be a Prototype despite the mounting evidence - and what makes her eventual death all the more tragic]]. |
| 215 | * IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy: In the good endings of ''[RE]turn'' [[spoiler: Chigara survives but revelations of her nature as a Prototype and the chance she'll be controlled by Alpha ruin her position as chief engineer and her relationship with Kayto - with the captain having now fallen for Ava, Asaga, Icari or Sola. However, she's still on board the Sunrider as an intelligence asset and is content to see Kayto happy with his chosen love interest]]. |
| 216 | * LivingEmotionalCrutch: She becomes this for Kayto toward the end of ''Mask of Arcadius'', giving him the emotional support he needs to keep going after the Legion's latest attack and Ava's rejection brings him to the brink of despair. [[spoiler:It's [[FreudianExcuse a big part of why]] Kayto couldn't accept she was a Prototype and why it takes him until late in the fourth game to truly accept how damaging that dependency was in the long run]]. |
| 217 | * TheLostLenore: [[spoiler:Becomes this for Kayto in ''The Captain's Return'', with him left haunted by his failure to save her from either the Prototype's body-hijacking or from Fontana's fatal bullet. To a lesser degree, it's also implied she became this for Asaga in both the fourth game and ''[RE]turn'', having reconciled that Prototype or not she was still Asaga's friend and didn't deserve what happened to her]]. |
| 218 | * LoveTriangle: During Liberation Day, she and Asaga both end up falling for Kayto, but Kayto only has eyes for Chigara. This places strain on both the two girls' friendship and [[LoveMakesYouCrazy Asaga's sanity]]. |
| 219 | * ManchurianAgent: [[spoiler:She’s an unwitting Prototype spy. And unlike most Manchurian Agents, Chigara doesn’t require a code phrase to be activated since the other Prototypes can take control of her at any time through their shared HiveMind - nor does she need to approve of them, having genuinely opposed them to the point she broke free of their control in the few moments before Fontana killed her]]. |
| 220 | * TheMole: Ava and Asaga begin to suspect that Chigara is this during ''Liberation Day'', given her striking resemblance to the Prototypes and the fact that PACT has been able to anticipate the Sunrider's every move for much of the story - to say nothing of the captive Prototype [=L7NN=] deliberately taunting over it to try and drive a wedge between the crew and their captain. [[spoiler:Played straight in that Chigara ''was'' planted by the Prototypes, but also subverted as she wasn't feeding them information on the Sunrider's movements: [[TheDogWasTheMastermind Claude was]].]] |
| 221 | * OfficialCouple: Despite the LoveTriangle between herself, Kayto, and Asaga, Chigara and Kayto have become this by ''Liberation Day''. [[spoiler:[[HoneyTrap Unfortunately.]]]] |
| 222 | * ReiAyanamiExpy: In a different manner than Sola; [[spoiler:Chigara is part of an army of blue-haired genetically-engineered clones, and even has a similar hairstyle to Rei]]. |
| 223 | * SecondLove: Chigara becomes this for Kayto after Ava [[BreakHisHeartToSaveHim rejects him]] toward the end of ''Mask of Arcadius''. |
| 224 | * SecretlySelfish: Played with. In the last third of ''Liberation Day'', it starts coming out that she's grown far more possessive of Kayto than she appears after he returns her feelings - [[spoiler:to the point of telling off a then-resentful Asaga, in no uncertain terms, she will ''not'' give him up for anything and effectively ending their friendship over it]]. |
| 225 | * ShyBlueHairedGirl: She's shy, blue-haired, [[SmartPeopleBuildRobots smart enough to build two Ryders by herself and singlehandedly maintain and upgrade an entire squadron of them]], and would rather be running a bakery than fighting in a war. For bonus points, her best friend Asaga is a FieryRedhead. |
| 226 | * SoleSurvivor: Chigara is the only person to survive the Diode Catastrophe, in which most of her home planet was swallowed up by a black hole. [[spoiler:Except she's not.]] |
| 227 | * SplitPersonalityMerge: At the end of ''Liberation Day'', [[spoiler:Chigara's personality [[FusionDance merges with Alice's inside the Hive Mind]], with her statement of "CHIGARA'S COMING FOR YOU!" indicating Alice's hatred of humanity has twisted Chigara into a yandere]]. |
| 228 | * ThirdPersonPerson: Chigara occasionally slips into this. |
| 229 | * TomatoInTheMirror: [[spoiler:She's one of the Prototypes, designated as a [=C8=] model]]; a realization she does not take well, [[spoiler:especially when it calls into question how genuine her initial feelings for Kayto actually were]]. |
| 230 | * TrueNeutral: While the others will approve or disapprove of your moral stance, Chigara is always reluctant to state a firm opinion and will generally happily go along with whatever Kayto decides. [[spoiler: Of course, her [[HoneyTrap infatuation]] with him might be the reason for suppressing her distaste for certain ideas.]] |
| 231 | * TwinSwitch: In the ''Academy'' spinoff, Lynn makes a bet with Chigara that Shields can only tell them apart due to their IdenticalTwinIDTag. [[spoiler:Chigara takes the bet and pretends to be Lynn and vice versa, proving Lynn correct when Shields obliviously falls for it. However, Lynn takes advantage of this to rape Shields via a BedTrick, leaving Chigara even more heartbroken]]. |
| 232 | * VerbalTic: Her constant nervous laughter when making small talk highlights her lack of social skills. |
| 233 | * WalkingSpoiler: It’s a bit hard to discuss her without revealing that [[spoiler:she’s a Prototype]]. |
| 234 | * WhiteMage: Her combat skills focus mainly on repair abilities and ally {{Status Buff}}s. |
| 235 | * YouAreNumber6: [[spoiler:[[HiveQueen Alpha]] refers to her as a C8-model Prototype during their chat in the mind stream]]. |
| 236 | [[/folder]] |
| 237 | |
| 238 | [[folder:Cosette Cosmos]] |
| 239 | !!!Voiced by:Jill Harris (EN), Hayase Yayoi (JP) |
| 240 | [[quoteright:335:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cosette_cosmos_6731.jpg]] |
| 241 | [[caption-width-right:335:"I'll burn 'em all!"]] |
| 242 | |
| 243 | A feared space pirate, Cosette’s name is reviled through most of civilized space. She entered the life of crime starting at birth and now assumes control of much of the galaxy’s marauding pirate gangs. Despite her infamy, she is a folk hero among the poor for her brazen attacks on the richest nations in the galaxy. However, her brutal methods of retaining power and her merciless attacks on civilian vessels make her an unquestionable villain to most of civilized society. |
| 244 | |
| 245 | Cosette pilots the Havoc, a slow and heavily armored bomber of a Ryder equipped with missiles, rockets, a gatling gun, and a chainsaw. She upgrades to the similarly equipped Calamity (and its many successors) in ''Sunrider 4: The Captain's Return'', eventually adding cluster missiles to its arsenal. |
| 246 | ---- |
| 247 | * {{Angrish}}: Kayto keeps blowing up her Ryder - initially, she replaces it with the Calamity Mk II, the Mk III, etc. The final time you fight her, she's piloting the Calamity Mk [=FUCK3q2u84h3q9r=]. |
| 248 | * AxCrazy: As the story progresses and she keeps racking up defeats at the hands of the ''Sunrider'', she grows increasingly unhinged. |
| 249 | * BerserkButton: She does not enjoy being called little. |
| 250 | * ChainsawGood: The Havoc is armed with a gigantic chainsaw for melee combat. The Calamity replaces this chainsaw with a set of three buzz saws arranged in a triangle. |
| 251 | * ChronicallyCrashedCar: The Calamity gets destroyed every time she fights Kayto in ''The Captain's Return''. Eventually she stops numbering them and [[{{Angrish}} names the final model]] Calamity Mk [=FUCK3q2u84h3q9r=]. |
| 252 | * CompensatingForSomething: Her Ryders, the Havoc and the Calamity (and it's successors), are bigger and more heavily armored than any of the player's, and all of their weapons are noticeably larger than those of most other Ryders. |
| 253 | * CripplingOverspecialization: The Havoc relies heavily on its missiles and antimatter rockets in battle. Assuming they aren't shot down by enemy flak, they can do a fair bit of damage—but it only has a limited supply of them. Once it runs out, it has to fall back on its chainsaw and gatling gun, which both have limited range and aren’t much good against armoured targets. |
| 254 | * CuttingOffTheBranches: She reappears in the fourth game regardless of if the player chose to let Asaga kill her in ''Liberation Day''. |
| 255 | * DarkAndTroubledPast: She suffered Ongessite poisoning that stunted her growth, and was forcibly prostituted by her mother. |
| 256 | * EnemyMine: Cosette hates Kayto and has tried to kill him many times, but circumstances have forced the two of them to team up against a greater threat more than once. These team-ups typically end with Cosette taking the first opportunity to either ditch Kayto or stab him in the back. |
| 257 | * GatlingGood: The Havoc is also armed with a gatling cannon that's just as long as the aforementioned chainsaw. |
| 258 | * InvincibilityPowerUp: Maxing out Cosette's affection meter will unlock the [[spoiler:Finest Hour order, which makes the Maray invulnerable to regular attacks for three turns.]] |
| 259 | * KnowWhenToFoldEm: In her ending for ''The Captain's Return', [[spoiler:she is seen drinking, with the bonus missions featuring her coming from her provocations upon drinking alcohol. Kayto sends a message to her, with her replying that she has finally given up trying to fight him, finding him no longer worth the effort]]. |
| 260 | * TheNapoleon: She has a massive complex about her height and apparent age, and is quite a violent individual. |
| 261 | * NotInThisForYourRevolution: She can [[spoiler: join the Sunrider's forces for the final battle of ''Liberation Day'' but only sticks around long enough to get the ship through to its objective to pay the captain back for freeing her and then takes off immediately rather than sticking around for what looks to be a LastStand to save Cera.]] |
| 262 | * OlderThanTheyLook: It's not clear how old she really is, but Ongessite poisoning has stunted her growth to the point that she basically stopped aging when she was 11 years old. [[spoiler:''The Captain's Return'' later implies this was deliberately done alongside operations to change her appearance]]. |
| 263 | * OptionalPartyMember: Depending on choices made in the first game, she can be captured and pressganged into the Sunrider's crew during ''Liberation Day''. |
| 264 | * PirateGirl: SpacePirate variant. |
| 265 | * SpacePirate: The leader of a group of them. |
| 266 | * StarterVillain: She's the first major antagonist you fight, though more competent than the later [[SmugSnake Cullen]]. |
| 267 | * SuddenSequelDeathSyndrome: She can die at the end of ''Liberation Day''[='=]s opening mission, depending on the player's decisions in ''Mask of Arcadius''. |
| 268 | * RevengeBeforeReason: When posed with a chance for revenge against the Alliance, Cosette is more than willing to let Grey detonate Ongess and kill millions. |
| 269 | * UnexplainedRecovery: Depending on the player's choices, Cosette may have been blown to smithereens at the start of ''Liberation Day''. She turns up alive in ''The Captain's Return'' with no explanation for how she survived, much to Kayto's bewilderment. |
| 270 | * VillainDecay: Pirates are dangerous at the start of the game, but her crew is quickly eclipsed by your other enemies. Especially pronounced in ''The Captain's Return'', due to the number of times you cross paths - by your final encounter, Ava notes that she's barely an obstacle at that point. |
| 271 | * WalkingSpoiler: She's in the Ryder Pilots section of the cast for a reason. |
| 272 | [[/folder]] |
| 273 | |
| 274 | [[folder:Icari Isidolde]] |
| 275 | !!!Voiced by: Aimee Smith (EN), Haruna Ren (JP) |
| 276 | [[quoteright:335:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/icari_isidolde_875.jpg]] |
| 277 | [[caption-width-right:335:"I'm not doing this b-because I like you!"[[labelnote:Click here to see Icari as she appears in Liberation Day]] https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/icari_character_ld_2.png[[/labelnote]]]] |
| 278 | |
| 279 | A tough mercenary from the rough quarters of the galaxy, Icari has a no-nonsense attitude about life. Icari was thrust into the harsh world of piracy when her parents were murdered by a PACT captain in her childhood. She developed a proficiency for close quarters combat and became one of the most formidable assassins in the galaxy. Her services are now sought by crime lords and world leaders alike. Icari handles the dirty business of the galaxy’s nations with a hardened heart. Deep down, she regrets the life she now leads and lives only for one purpose: to find her parents’ murderers and avenge their deaths. |
| 280 | |
| 281 | Icari pilots the Phoenix, a fast but fragile Ryder that excels at killing enemy Ryders with its melee weapons. She upgrades to the Phoenix mark II in ''Sunrider 4''. |
| 282 | ---- |
| 283 | * AmbiguouslyBi: Icari is indisputably attracted to Kayto (much as she might try to deny it), but there’s also enough HomoeroticSubtext between her and Kryska [[LampshadeHanging that other characters will comment on it]] in order to get under her skin. |
| 284 | * ChainLethalityEnabler: The Phoenix mark II has a passive skill, Boost, which works this way. If Icari makes a melee attack against an enemy Ryder and there's another Ryder within melee distance when she stops moving, she will automatically spend a charge of Boost to attack that enemy at no energy cost. Several of Icari's relationship perks upgrade Boost's effectiveness, such as making chained melee attacks do extra damage and giving her a chance to activate Boost for free. |
| 285 | * CloseRangeCombatant: In battle, her strengths lie in quickly closing with an enemy ryder and delivering a devastating melee attack, then fading back into cover. |
| 286 | * CripplingOverspecialization: The developers designed the Phoenix to be this way; able to cut a wide swathe through enemy ryders but nigh-useless against heavily armored ships (since you can't melee ships and her assault guns only do ScratchDamage against any level of armor). |
| 287 | * DarkAndTroubledPast: She was orphaned when a PACT patrol blew up her family's spaceship, leaving her trapped in an escape pod for five days before anyone found her. |
| 288 | * FatSuit: Wore one once to impersonate "a low-level PACT veniczar". |
| 289 | * FragileSpeedster: The Phoenix takes a mere 10 energy to move one tile, and can do up to 600 base damage with its melee attack, but has the least health of any of the team's ryders. |
| 290 | * FromNobodyToNightmare: One bad day turned her from the child of freelance explorers to a mercenary who'll [[TheUnfettered do just about anything for revenge on her parent's killers]]. |
| 291 | * FreudianSlip: She blurts out that she likes Kayto while questioning [[WhatDoesSheSeeInHim what the rest of the crew sees in him]] after all the screw-ups that he’s made. |
| 292 | * HeelFaceTurn: She starts out as an enemy before getting shot down and captured by the ''Sunrider'', and will turn against you if you decide to spare the Alliance diplomats, attempting to off them herself... only to rejoin you when she realizes that she was about to kill helpless children. |
| 293 | * HitmanWithAHeart: She might be an amoral mercenary and assassin, but she draws the line at killing children. |
| 294 | * HomoeroticSubtext: With Kryska. The two of them quickly form a close friendship, leading some members of the crew to speculate that their relationship isn't strictly platonic (they shower together after the intro to ''Liberation Day'', for example). Icari vociferously denies the idea that there's anything between them, much like she denies her attraction to Kayto. There's even an achievement (called "What are you implying?", appropriately enough) unlocked by having the two of them end their turns next to each other every turn for a mission. |
| 295 | * KatanasAreJustBetter: Her primary weapon in the Phoenix and in person. |
| 296 | * TheLancer: Serves as this to Asaga, being the cynical, pragmatic ice to her fire. Naturally they both quickly learn to respect each other for their skills, despite their contrasting personalities. |
| 297 | * MeaningfulName: Her name might be derived from the Japanese word Ikari, which can mean "anger". This would fit both her hatred of PACT and her nature as a {{Tsundere}}. |
| 298 | * MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Has a very soft one in ''Mask of Arcadius'' if you let the alliance diplomats and the children die. Though she rationalizes it pretty quickly, it's telling that calling off the mission once you learn about the children earns you an affection point with her. |
| 299 | * TheNicknamer: She refers to Kryska as "soldier boy" and Claude as "Chest Rockets." |
| 300 | * NotSoStoic: Icari puts up a facade of stone-cold badassery, but she's actually one of the most emotional members of the crew, and breaks down in tears more than once. |
| 301 | * OddFriendship: With Kryska. Despite one being a disciplined, professional soldier and the other being an [[{{Tsundere}} easily-flustered, emotional]] mercenary, the two of them get along very well both on and off the battlefield. |
| 302 | * ReducedResourceCost: One of Icari's relationship bonuses in ''Sunrider 4'' reduces the cost of after-battle repairs by 15%, saving you some valuable credits. |
| 303 | * StealthInSpace: The Phoenix has cloak ability. Initially it simply protects against enemy flak from getting too close, alllowing Icari to attack in melee without being shot all the time, but a purchasable upgrade in ''Liberation Day'' makes her impossible to be targeted by any enemy attack for an entire turn, greatly alleviating her FragileSpeedster issues. In ''Sunrider 4'' it's a tool to ReduceAggro, making enemy units more likely to target somebody else. |
| 304 | * {{Tsundere}}: Icari is a fairly extreme Type A, being a temperamental mercenary who vehemently denies having feelings for Kaito. |
| 305 | -->I'm not doing this because I like you! |
| 306 | * RedOniBlueOni: The Red to Kryska's blue. Icari's hotheaded and combative in person and in combat, and her ryder emphasizes speed and ryder-versus-ryder weaponry, including a sword for melee. She's a mercenary who's willing to make great sacrifices if it means hurting PACT, and is generally one of your most cynical and pragmatic pilots. |
| 307 | * RightForTheWrongReasons: She argues to Kryska not to turn herself in after [[spoiler:helping to destroy Machiavelli Actual]] as it would just result in a KangarooCourt and being executed for treason. [[spoiler:While she was correct in the former, it resulted in her acquittal for the sake of covering up the reputation of the late Admiral. Adding insult to injury, it furthered the Progress Party in stripping the crew of Alliance support in the Neutral Rim War instead of regaining it.]] |
| 308 | * UnscrupulousHero: She's not evil by any means, but she's extremely bloodthirsty and openly out to kill her enemies. Out of battle she's normally the one championing the more pragmatic course of action. |
| 309 | * VitriolicBestBuds: With Kryska. Though the two of them may lock horns over every conceivable topic, it's clear that they have considerable respect for each other and when push comes to shove they have each other's backs. |
| 310 | * WhatDoesSheSeeInHim: Thanks to the above FreudianSlip, she ends up doing this to ''herself'': |
| 311 | -->'''Icari:''' Aah, what is this stupid love fest… Hmph! I can’t believe you guys still even like this guy! Just look at him! Totally got [[spoiler:backstabbed by his new girlfriend, like literally just days after going out]]! Totally ruined everything we fought for the past year! And on top of that, ''completely'' [[spoiler:vaporized our ship]]! Ah, the most unreliable space captain in the history of space captains! I can’t believe [[FreudianSlip I]] like a guy like him! ''(realizes what she just said)'' U-uck… I-I-I-I-I MEAN… I-i-i-i-it… IT’S NOT LIKE I LIKE YOU OR ANYTHING!!! ''(runs off screaming in embarrassment)'' |
| 312 | [[/folder]] |
| 313 | |
| 314 | [[folder:Claude Triello]] |
| 315 | !!!Voiced by: Sydney P. (EN), Murasaki Nina (JP, ''Liberation Day''), Ayane Mako (JP, ''The Captain's Return'') |
| 316 | [[quoteright:335:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/claude_triello_6747.jpg]] |
| 317 | [[caption-width-right:335:"Captain~, you better keep your eyes on me~"[[labelnote:Click here to see Claude as she appears in Liberation Day]] https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/claude_character_ld_2.png[[/labelnote]]]] |
| 318 | |
| 319 | The acting medical officer on board the Sunrider. Her medical credentials seem questionable, but seeing how the Sunrider had to leave port without a doctor, she’s the best the Sunrider has. Has a few screws loose in her head, and prone to forgetting things. It seems like the only reason she’s on board is to get into the captain's pants, err... medical examinations. She’s an ostensible ryder pilot, but has issues with motion sickness and reaction times. Generally unreliable, but has insanely good luck. |
| 320 | |
| 321 | Claude's eccentricity is matched by her Ryder, the Bianca, which combines the ability to debuff enemy units, remove debuffs from allies, a very inaccurate kinetic weapon, and a gravity gun with which to reposition friend and foe alike. In ''Sunrider 4'' she replaces it with the Spellcaster, which trades out the kinetic weapon for a set of powerful torpedoes. |
| 322 | ---- |
| 323 | * AlternateSelf: In her ''Sunrider 4'' ending, [[spoiler:she states that there are countless other versions of herself running around throughout time and space, pursuing their own agendas. She implies that the Claude who orchestrated the ''[RE]Turn'' scenario was one of these alternate selves]]. |
| 324 | * AmbiguouslyEvil: [[spoiler:While she is helping to save the galaxy from Crow, and helps Kayto in ''[RE]turn'' to defeat Arcadius/Alice, she seems to be doing it [[ItAmusedMe purely for amusement]] and is TheMole who works alongside the Prototypes and will manipulate her allies regardless.]] |
| 325 | * AntiDebuff: Her Restore ability removes all debuffs from its target. |
| 326 | * BigBadDuumvirate: [[AmbiguouslyEvil Played with]]: [[spoiler:she works alongside Alice and Alpha and [[TheMole pulls the strings of Kayto’s crew to get them where they need to]], and is miles more powerful than her partners, but is willing to betray them when they have different goals. Nevertheless, it’s ambiguous whether this is a true HeelFaceTurn or simply a temporary EnemyMine. She’s also implied to be the antagonist of ''Sunrider Academy''’s Sola Route, as the being that is attempting to remove Sola from the timeline [[WellIntentionedExtremist due to her being]] a ParadoxPerson]]. [[spoiler:In ''Sunrider 4'', Claude -- or rather, Canon -- is revealed to be the GreaterScopeVillain, orchestrating the events of the entire series purely to entertain herself.]] |
| 327 | * BitchInSheepsClothing: While she’s not exactly all that nice, she does have [[PetTheDog some moments of kindness]], like when she [[ShipperOnDeck helps Chigara hook up with Kayto]]. [[spoiler:It later turns out that she’s a spy, and all her moments of kindness [[BaitTheDog were to further her goals]] - though she does [[EvenEvilHasStandards draw a line]] at the Liberation Day Massacre and abandons the Prototypes to work with Kayto going forward.]] |
| 328 | * BuxomBeautyStandard: While it's not particularly obvious from her sprites, other characters occasionally comment on her having a large bust, such as Chigara being jealous of her figure. Her ''Liberation Day'' sprites make it more readily apparent. |
| 329 | * CustomUniform: She made her own doctors outfit with a plunging neckline, pink colour scheme and heart-shaped decorations. |
| 330 | * DeflectorShields: Both of Claude's Ryders can project shields to protect allied units from incoming laser fire. The Bianca has a continuous shield which it projects over a radius, while the Spellcaster instead can create temporary shields at any point on the map. |
| 331 | * TheDogWasTheMastermind: [[spoiler:Would you believe she’s TheMole? Or a PhysicalGod?]] |
| 332 | * EvenEvilHasStandards: [[spoiler:She was working with Alpha and the prototypes up until the Liberation Day Massacre. The slaughter convinces her to cut ties with them and work only for Kayto]]. |
| 333 | * GameOverMan: She takes this role in the ''[RE]turn'' scenario, where she’ll chew Kayto out for his mistakes if he gets a bad ending and offer tips on how to get a better outcome. |
| 334 | * GodWasMyCopilot: [[spoiler:The end of ''Liberation Day'' reveals that your bumbling, sex-crazed medic was TheMole and an omnipotent, time-traveling god all along.]] |
| 335 | * GodsHandsAreTied: [[spoiler:Claude can’t use her powers to their fullest potential because recklessly messing with time will cause universe-destroying time paradoxes. This forces her to use her abilities in more subtle, carefully planned-out ways. As shown in ''[RE]turn’s'' secret ending, she could make a complete joke out of the villains if she ever cut loose, but the resulting paradox could potentially destroy reality itself.]] |
| 336 | * GravityMaster: The Bianca has a built-in gravity gun that lets her move enemy Ryders one space in any direction. It can also be used to immobilize Ryders or tear out their reactors… [[CutscenePowerToTheMax in cutscenes, anyway]]. |
| 337 | * GreatGazoo: [[spoiler:She’s very much a Trickster God. While she’s powerful enough to end all conflict in the plot with a snap of her fingers, she doesn’t, and while there are [[GodsHandsAreTied legitimate reasons]] for why she can’t do that, the main reason she won’t is because [[ItAmusedMe it amuses and arouses her]] to watch Kayto try to overcome the challenges set before him through his own merits. Because of this, she limits herself to messing with the Sunrider’s crew in more mundane ways and gives Kayto little assistance during the [RE]turn scenario.]] |
| 338 | * HospitalHottie: Subverted; she's an unlicensed quack. (She later gets her license reinstated, but Kayto actually asks who she had to bribe to do it.) |
| 339 | * ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy: In ''[RE]turn'' she somehow misses a large robot with a rocket launcher in a straight corridor. |
| 340 | * ItAmusedMe: Ultimately, all of her actions, from joining Kayto's crew on, are because she's bored and looking for entertainment. |
| 341 | * JerkassGods: [[spoiler:Her main concern is entertaining herself, regardless of how much suffering she puts others through in the process.]] |
| 342 | * LittleMissAlmighty: [[spoiler:This young-ish looking woman is effectively a god.]] |
| 343 | * LovableSexManiac: She makes no secret of her wanting to get in Kayto’s pants. She flirts with him right from the get-go, drools over him while giving him an examination, and even tries to molest him during it. And Kayto is far from the first person she’s done this to, as Ava discovers when doing a background check on Claude. While Claude’s behavior does lead to her losing her medical license and getting arrested by Ava, it’s still PlayedForLaughs. |
| 344 | * MeaningfulName: [[spoiler:Her true name is Canon, and she represents the {{Railroading}} of the series. The only reason the story exists is because of her intervention -- whether direct or indirect -- on multiple occasions, including the return of Crow Harbor. Without her, the universe would be nothing more than a bunch of what-if scenarios, so she's making sure there can be only one route the player can go despite the options]]. |
| 345 | * MildlyMilitary: She has even less discipline than Asaga. |
| 346 | * MechanicallyUnusualClass: She's a sort of support/debuffer hybrid who basically does everything Chigara doesn't; she can't repair damage but she can remove debuffs, she debuffs enemy accuracy rather than defences, she also has a shield but it starts out smaller than Chigara's until upgraded and she has the unusual and unique Gravity Gun which allows her to forcibly move enemy ryders around the field. When part 1 of the game was released her Restore ability was effectively useless since enemy ewar ryders didn't appear until part 2. And finally, unlike Chigara who has a weak but moderately accurate long-ranged laser, Claude is packing an outrageously powerful but hilariously inaccurate ballistic cannon similar to a ShortRangeShotgun. |
| 347 | * TheMole: [[spoiler:Claude has been working for the Prototypes since she first joined the Sunrider's crew, sending them regular updates on the ship's activities and falsifying medical records to make it seem like Chigara isn't a Prototype.]] |
| 348 | * NaughtyNurseOutfit: She wears this when she's working in sickbay. |
| 349 | * NoFourthWall: [[spoiler:Enters this territory in ''The Captain's Return'' following her reveal to Shields during his capture by Fontana.]] |
| 350 | * NotInThisForYourRevolution: She's in it to get into the captain's pants! [[spoiler:And also cause she’s working with the bad guys. And cause [[ItAmusedMe it’s fun]]]]. She'll actually pretend to fall asleep if you try and talk to her about the fate of the galaxy. |
| 351 | * NotSoOmniscientAfterAll: [[spoiler:In ''The Captain's Return'', she reveals her knowledge of the future is limited to knowing the "what-ifs" and "maybes" - while she's aware of everything that ''can'' happen, she doesn't know which possibility will become reality until it's actually happening; something that, in her epilogue, she reinforces as the thing that [[ItAmusedMe keeps her entertained]] and invested in the present. This is further evidenced in the epilogue of ''Liberation Day'', where she breaks off her alliance with the Prototypes because she disapproved of the Liberation Day Massacre; had she known for a fact what would come out of their partnership, she likely would have split before it ever happened.]]. |
| 352 | * MsFanservice: She has the largest bust of the female crew, is the only one to wear her uniform in a way that bares her cleavage, wears a NaughtyNurseOutfit when working in sickbay, peppers her dialogue and battle quotes with sexual innuendo, and in ''Liberation Day'' her sprites are frequently posed in ways that emphasize her figure. |
| 353 | * ObfuscatingStupidity: Claude may act like an airheaded bimbo most of the time, but she's a lot smarter and craftier than she lets on. [[spoiler:She drops most of her quirks when revealing her true nature to Kayto in the fourth game.]] |
| 354 | * PhysicalGod: [[spoiler:She's a dimension-hopping reality-warping entity of the TricksterGod variant.]] |
| 355 | * PinkIsErotic: She has pink hair, wears a pink plugsuit and pilots a pink Ryder. She's also the resident MsFanservice and the most lascivious member of the crew by a country mile. |
| 356 | * PlayfulHacker: If her battle lines are any indication, Claude's accuracy-debuffing skills work by hacking into an enemy's system to upload malware and mess with their HUD, such as replacing their mouse cursor with her own selfie. |
| 357 | * ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: [[spoiler:If her secret ending is any indication, she’s existed since the days of the Ryuvia Empire.]] |
| 358 | * ShipperWithAnAgenda: Claude is unusually supportive of the budding relationship between Kayto and Chigara, despite lusting after Kayto herself, and helps push the two of them together over the course of the first game. [[spoiler:This is because Chigara is a Prototype sleeper-agent sent to seduce Kayto, and Claude, their collaborator, is making sure that it happens.]] |
| 359 | * SpellMyNameWithAnS: Is it Claude ''Trilleo'', or Claude ''Triello''? The games consistently use one spelling, and the promotional materials (like the image above) consistently use the other. |
| 360 | * SupportPartyMember: Claude's Ryders are, objectively speaking, terrible at offense, with their primary weapons having either low range and accuracy (the Bianca) or limited ammunition (the Spellcaster). Fortunately, they make up for this in other ways. Want to take some of the heat off your units? Use Claude to debuff an enemy's accuracy. Need to get one of your Ryders out of a jam, or want to introduce an enemy Ryder's face to some of your missiles? The Gravity Gun's got you covered. The Bianca can also cleanse debuffs from your units, while the Spellcaster can buff your allies' attack power. |
| 361 | * TalkingIsAFreeAction: She gives a moving speech in the middle of a battle to [[spoiler:snap Asaga out of her Shaar-induced rage. It's double subverted - her ryder is blown up while she's distracted, but the Prototype waited until after she calmed down and convinced Asaga to shoot]]. |
| 362 | * TimeMaster: [[spoiler:Thanks to possessing a time machine, Claude is able to: travel through time; teleport at will; speed up or slow down the flow of time, or stop it altogether; [[MesACrowd create]] ''thousands'' [[MesACrowd of duplicates of herself]]; create pocket dimensions within subspace; create and destroy alternate timelines and universes; and even [[ColonyDrop open rifts in space-time through which she can summon meteors]]. The only thing limiting her is that drawing too heavily on her powers can create reality-destroying paradoxes, and even these can be undone as shown in the secret ending of ''[RE]turn''.]] |
| 363 | * TimeTravel: [[spoiler:Claude is able to do this through unknown means, which effectively makes her omnipotent by this setting's rules.]] |
| 364 | * TorpedoTits: The Spellcaster's torpedo tubes are built into its torso, in exactly the place you would expect a pervert like Claude to put them. |
| 365 | * VictoriasSecretCompartment: In ''Liberation Day''[='=]s ''[RE]turn'' scenario she pulls a rocket launcher out of her cleavage, quipping that she's not called "Torpedo Tits" for nothing. |
| 366 | * WellIntentionedExtremist: [[spoiler:For all her [[ItAmusedMe antics]], it’s implied that she’s working with the Prototypes to deal with the [[ParadoxPerson living paradox]] that is [[GreaterScopeVillain Crow Harbor]]... at least until the fourth game subverts this, as it reveals ''she's'' the one responsible for Crow's temporal displacement - for no other reason than [[ItAmusedMe setting up an entertaining conflict for her to watch]]]]. |
| 367 | * WalkingSpoiler: The ending of ''Liberation Day'' turns everything the player previously knew about Claude on its head, making it difficult to talk about her true nature. |
| 368 | * WingdingEyes: Gets hearts in her eyes whenever she’s feeling amorous towards Kayto. |
| 369 | [[/folder]] |
| 370 | |
| 371 | [[folder:Kryska Stares]] |
| 372 | !!!Voiced by:Cayla Martin (EN), Yumeno Usagi (JP) |
| 373 | [[quoteright:335:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kriska_stares_8140.jpg]] |
| 374 | [[caption-width-right:335:"Awaiting orders, sir!"[[labelnote:Click here to see Kryska as she appears in Liberation Day]] https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kryska_character_ld_2.png[[/labelnote]]]] |
| 375 | |
| 376 | A young lieutenant in the Solar Alliance Fleet, Kryska is the Alliance’s liaison officer on board the Sunrider. As an Alliance citizen, Kryska’s presence is generally unwelcome on board the Sunrider. Groomed to be an Alliance officer from childhood, Kryska is fiercely proud of the Alliance and believes it to be the greatest nation on galaxy. Kryska is highly idealistic about the Alliance and is eager to share the Alliance’s democratic ideals and technical know-how with the “lesser” nations of the galaxy. The rest of the crew eye her with suspicion, but the Captain is generally appreciative of Kryska, and the Alliance’s, support. |
| 377 | |
| 378 | Kryska pilots the Paladin, a slow but heavily-armed and -armored Ryder that can inflict severe damage with its missiles and kinetic weapons, and which can taunt enemies into attacking it. |
| 379 | ---- |
| 380 | * TwentyFourHourArmor: As Captain Paladin, Kryska wears a suit of knight-like PowerArmor at all times. Once she's been redeemed and rejoins the Maray's crew, she foregoes wearing a uniform in favor of spending all her time in her plugsuit, barring one optional scene where she wears sweats and a T-shirt while working out with Icari. |
| 381 | * AggressiveNegotiations: Several of her battle quotes reference this trope, particularly the ones that play when she hits an enemy. |
| 382 | -->"Weaponized diplomacy was successful!"\ |
| 383 | "Surrender, or I will resume hostilities."\ |
| 384 | "Do you ''still'' refuse to negotiate?" |
| 385 | * AmbiguouslyGay: Apart from her close friendship with Icari, Kryska mentions at one point that she previously served in an all-female crew, as the Solar Alliance believes that segregating their soldiers into single-sex crews will prevent fraternization. When asked if these measures actually worked, Kryska responds with a smirk and a brief chuckle. Tellingly, she's the only member of the crew[[note]]apart from Chigara[[/note]] who ''can't'' be romanced by Kayto in the ''[RE]turn'' scenarios [[spoiler:and is similarly one of the few lacking an epilogue with romantic subtext in ''The Captain's Return'', her ending instead being rolled together with Icari's]]. |
| 386 | * AutoRevive: One of Kryska's relationship perks in the fourth game gives the Paladin the ability to revive itself with 50% of its maximum HP when it gets shot down. |
| 387 | %%* {{Bifauxnen}} |
| 388 | * CharClone: [[spoiler:Becomes one in ''The Captain's Return'' of the DarkMessiah type as the Paladin, while wearing a helmet like [[Anime/MobileSuitGundamF91 Iron Mask]].]] |
| 389 | * CriticalStatusBuff: Some of Kryska's affection perks boost her stats when her health falls below certain thresholds. Shield Wall boosts her armor when she's down to one-quarter or less, while the Iron Fury perks give her a chance to fire extra shots from her kinetic weapon while at half health or less. Her ultimate perk doubles the power of her attacks while she is at exactly 1 hit point. |
| 390 | * DarkAndTroubledPast: Kryska grew up in poverty on a Neutral Rim world whose corrupt government terrorized the populace while never lifting a finger to protect them from pirate raids. When the Alliance liberated her world, she embraced its culture and became fervently dedicated to its ideals. |
| 391 | * DoAnythingSoldier: Kryska has shades of this, being both an elite gunnery pilot and a special operations soldier who excels in espionage, martial arts, and escape techniques. |
| 392 | * HelmetsAreHardlyHeroic: Her stint as Captain Paladin is the only time that ''any'' named character in the series wears a helmet, and it's also when she's at her most villainous. Fittingly, it's only when the helmet comes off that her redemption becomes possible. |
| 393 | * HomoeroticSubtext: Her close friendship with Icari leads several members of the crew to speculate that something more may be going on between them. They shower together after the intro to ''Liberation Day'', for example. Kryska neither confirms nor denies the idea that she and Icari are a couple. There's even an achievement (called "What are you implying?") unlocked by having the two of them end their turns next to each other every turn for a mission. |
| 394 | * LastChanceHitPoint: In ''Sunrider 4'', Kryska's "Might of the Alliance" relationship perk allows the Paladin to survive attacks that would destroy it with 1 HP while guarding. |
| 395 | * MightyGlacier: The Paladin has the highest base health of the player ryders, and its kinetic weaponry matches that of the Sunrider, a ''capital ship'', but it's also the slowest player unit in the game, requiring 40 energy just to move a single tile. |
| 396 | * TheMole: The crew quickly figures out that she's an Alliance spy, sent to keep tabs on the Sunrider as much as to help them fight the PACT. |
| 397 | * NiceJobBreakingItHero: She invites Kayto to tour Ongess with her, so that he can see how the Alliance's relief efforts are helping the people and to show him that the Alliance can be trusted. Not only does this get the two of them captured by Cosette, but the Alliance's heavy-handed response during the rescue--namely, to indiscriminately gun down civilians, [[WouldHurtAChild including a little girl]] [[DisproportionateRetribution whose only crime was to pick up a knife]]--can convince Kayto that the Alliance is ''not'' to be trusted. |
| 398 | * TheNotLoveInterest: Kryska, who is strongly implied to be a lesbian, is the only member of the crew to show no romantic interest in Kayto, and vice versa. She has no route in Liberation Day's [=[RE]turn=] scenario, she doesn't appear in [[spoiler:Kayto's guilty fantasy when Fontana accuses him of lusting after the girls]], and her ''Sunrider 4'' ending--which she shares with Icari--is the only one to have no romantic undertones. |
| 399 | * OddFriendship: With Icari. Despite one being a disciplined, professional soldier and the other being an [[{{Tsundere}} easily-flustered, emotional]] mercenary, the two of them get along very well both on and off the battlefield. |
| 400 | * PatrioticFervor: She takes every opportunity to extol the virtues of the Solar Alliance and its technology, and is also willing to overlook some of the more questionable things her country does in the name of defeating PACT. |
| 401 | -->I'll show you the might of the Solar Alliance! |
| 402 | * PracticalTaunt: The Paladin's Drawfire skill, which makes enemy units more likely to target the Paladin and also drastically increases its armour. |
| 403 | * RankUp: She's been promoted to captain by the time of ''Sunrider 4''. |
| 404 | * RedOniBlueOni: The Blue to Icari's Red. Kryska is a by-the-book career soldier whose ryder emphasizes durability and protection at the cost of mobility. She's focused and disciplined in combat and is one of the most idealistic members of the crew where the Alliance is concerned. |
| 405 | * ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight: [[spoiler: Has standing orders to execute Shields at the end of Liberation Day, but renounces her allegiance to the Alliance after Icari intervenes.]] |
| 406 | * ShipperOnDeck: For Kayto and Icari in the latter's route of ''[RE]turn'', once she gets past her initial shock of learning they're even a thing. |
| 407 | * SurvivalThroughSelfSacrifice: Deconstructed during the Trial of Kryska Stares. She wanted to be punished following [[spoiler:her turning on her countrymen to save Cera]], hoping it would vindicate her friends at the cost of her life. While she got her wish, she was acquitted of all charges in a political maneuver, something that she was not happy with one bit and [[spoiler:a contributing factor to her leaving the Solar Alliance for good]]. |
| 408 | * TurnsRed: Deals significantly more damage at low health. |
| 409 | [[/folder]] |
| 410 | |
| 411 | [[folder:Sola vi Ryuvia]] |
| 412 | !!!Voiced by: Tina Kim (EN), Nakase Hina (JP, ''Liberation Day''), Mami Yahiro (JP, ''The Captain's Return'') |
| 413 | [[quoteright:335:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sola_3176.jpg]] |
| 414 | [[caption-width-right:335:"Captain?"[[labelnote:Click here to see Sola as she appears in Liberation Day]][[quoteright:218:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/f05d1a58_1dd2_49ae_b5ea_829d98ec6ea6.png]][[/labelnote]]]] |
| 415 | |
| 416 | Silent, yet deadly. When the going gets tough and the Sunrider gets trapped in moments of peril, the team can always count on the soft spoken Sola to turn the tide of battle with a few well placed sniper shots - probably from behind an asteroid over 100 000 kilometers away from the action. Her accomplishments include once sniping the wings off a Ryuvian sparrow from Ryuvia’s second moon. A girl of few words, Sola keeps her distance from everyone but the captain. In battle, her aim is unparalleled by anyone on the team. |
| 417 | |
| 418 | Sola's Ryder, the Seraphim, carries a powerful kinetic rifle that can inflict extreme damage from a considerable distance. She is forced to replace it with the Archangel in ''Sunrider 4'', which has a less accurate but just as powerful rifle and the ability to stabilize itself for improved accuracy. |
| 419 | ---- |
| 420 | * AbusiveParents: Sola's accounts of her father Rayvin don't paint a flattering picture of the man, but in ''Sunrider 4'' she admits that she was terrified of him. Not only did he force Sola to become the Sharr and fight on his behalf in a war ''he'' started, but he coerced her into piloting the Sharr'Lac, an action which they both knew would result in her death, by threatening her and the people she cared about. She outright calls him "evil incarnate" and "a monster". |
| 421 | * AlwaysAccurateAttack: One of Sola's ''Sunrider 4'' affection perks is a downplayed version of this. While she's near the Maray, the perk has a random chance to activate each time she attacks, guaranteeing that the attack will hit regardless of distance and accuracy checks. |
| 422 | * AnchoredAttackStance: ''Sunrider 4''[='=]s version of the Awaken skill immobilizes the Archangel while it's active. Sola can still rotate to keep enemies in her sights, but she can't otherwise move and won't even drift. |
| 423 | * AntiquatedLinguistics: Has a very formal way of speaking with clipped and un-emotive phrasings, in line with her being royalty [[FishOutOfTemporalWater from a bygone age]]. She starts to grow out of it by the end of ''Liberation Day'' and going into ''The Captain's Return'', as she grows closer to Kayto's crew and gets more accustomed to the modern age. |
| 424 | * ArbitraryWeaponRange: Sola's Archangel can't hit targets at close range. |
| 425 | * ArmorPiercingAttack: If you increase Sola's affection level enough in ''The Captain's Return'', you'll unlock a passive trait which lets the Archangel's shots ignore enemy armor. |
| 426 | * AscendedMeme: Her character sprite in the first two games often faced away from the player, which was meant to emphasize her isolationist nature - but it also tended to [[MaleGaze emphasize her rear]] to the player, especially when in her pilot suit. Every game after ''Mask of Arcadius'' not only ran with continuing this, but had spin-offs like ''Sunrider Academy'' describe her as having a [[HartmanHips rather ample backside]] that Kayto has some trouble keeping his eyes off and even wonders if she's deliberately showing it off or not. |
| 427 | * BeliefMakesYouStupid: Sola, despite being in a position to know better, sincerely believes in Ryuvia's self-aggrandizing imperial cult. She thinks her Sharr powers are mystical in nature and fearfully prays to the Infinite Emperor to have mercy on the party when they dismantle a sacred monolith. Granted that the Empire can certianly ''look'' mystical with the immense power Ryuvian tech holds, but Asaga readily admits that the Sharr's powers are rooted in science and genetic engineering, and she assures Kayto that the Infinite Emperor is not going to smite them for their sacrilege. |
| 428 | * BewareTheQuietOnes: Silent, yet exceedingly deadly. |
| 429 | * BigDamnKiss: [[spoiler:In ''The Captain's Return''; if Kayto maxes her relationship gauge and choses her for the epilogue, she gives one of these to signify their RelationshipUpgrade]]. |
| 430 | * CantHoldHerLiquor: In ''The Captain's Return'', the crew hits a bar while visiting the Astrium. Sola gets blind-stinking drunk after a single drink: first she's babbling incoherently, then she's talking in an uncharacteristically hammy and emotive way as she laments the indecency of modern Solarian fashion trends. |
| 431 | -->'''Sola:''' Hark! The rags the denizens of this world call apparel fail to cover anything more than their nether regions! What's more, they have defiled their bodies with... recreational modifications! What shameless flaunting of wealth and bio-machinery! What heresy is this? |
| 432 | * CastFromHitPoints: Her Awaken SuperMode consumes 75 hit points upon activation. Averted in ''Sunrider 4'', where activating it costs energy instead. |
| 433 | * ColdSniper: She is an aloof woman who specializes in long-range combat. |
| 434 | * DamageIncreasingDebuff: One of her later relationship perks makes her shots reduce the target's armor on that side by a large amount. This doesn't benefit Sola directly, as she'll already have the perk which lets her shots [[ArmorPiercingAttack ignore armor outright]] by the time she gets this, but it ''does'' leave the victim more vulnerable to the rest of your squadron. |
| 435 | * DarkAndTroubledPast: She was born when a Ryuvian prince had an affair with a farm girl, then dumped her. Later, the royal family came back and took Sola away when they needed a princess to fight their civil war for them - only they really didn't; they already had a healthy princess, but they wanted a ''scapegoat'' who could use forbidden technology without risking the true heir's life. Something Sola was pressured into doing under threar of reprisal towards anyone she cared about - [[spoiler:and worst of all is that, as she learns in the fourth game, her father might not have even been the real heir and just sacrificed her to secure his coup]]. |
| 436 | * EleventhHourSuperPower: [[spoiler: Sola activates a greater Awakening at the end of ''The Captain's Return'', replacing her slow movement with the map-spanning Warp ability.]] |
| 437 | * ExpositoryHairstyleChange: In ''The Captain's Return'', her hair is slightly longer and less neatly-kept after six years on a backwater colony, reflecting how she's started moving away from being the stoic former princess and becoming less self-constrained. |
| 438 | * FishOutOfTemporalWater: She's from several thousand years ago, found in stasis. [[spoiler: Although in fact she's only been in stasis a few months, having actually [[TimeTravel time travelled]] unintentionally.]] |
| 439 | * FlawedPrototype: Compared to the other examples of ancient Ryuvian technology, Sola's Ryder is fragile and slow - explained to be a cheap scout unit. In the present day, it makes her on-par with your other pilots, because ancient Ryuvian tech is just that good. |
| 440 | * GlassCannon: Very squishy if she attracts enemy fire (although her tendency to sit at the back of your formation picking enemies off at long range generally protects her from everything except missiles) but when using [[SuperMode Awakening]] her rifle is THE most powerful weapon available to you outside of rockets and [[WaveMotionGun the Vanguard Cannon]]. |
| 441 | * GoodFeelsGood: She states that she can't feel too bitter about being used as a disposable pawn by the Ryuvian Royal Family, as protecting the people of the Empire and hearing their cheers made her the happiest she's ever been. |
| 442 | * HeroicBastard: She was born from the affair of a Ryuvian prince with a farm girl. |
| 443 | * HeroicBSOD: [[spoiler:In ''The Captain's Return'', the party retrieves a datacrystal containing a historical account of the Ryuvian Civil War. In it, the author claims that Crow Harbor was the rightful heir to the Imperial throne - and that Sola's father was an illegitimate pretender who committed patricide to take the throne for himself. Hearing this account shatters Sola's worldview]]. |
| 444 | -->'''Sola:''' [[spoiler:I was ever the fool! Deceived by my father into believing Crow Harbor was a jealous bastard, when his own claim to the throne was completely fabricated! When I activated the Final Tear, I believed I had saved the Holy Empire. That the evil darkling had perished and the rightful rulers of Ryuvia had won. But to think I sacrificed my life, all for a lie! My entire life... has been a lie! This torment in my heart... I cannot bear it... Spare me of this misery! Tear it out now!]] |
| 445 | * HeroicRROD: By tapping into her bloodline's innate abilities, Sola can increase her visual perception and reflexes to superhuman levels, but doing so places a great strain on her body as seen under SuperMode. |
| 446 | * HiddenBackupPrince: As the bastard daughter of Ryuvian royalty, she was able to lead their fleets and activate technology keyed to the royal bloodline. It's played with - Sola was selected so that the 'real' princess wouldn't need to sacrifice herself. |
| 447 | * ImprobableAimingSkills: Apart from being able to shoot the wings off a sparrow while standing on a different celestial body from her target, her sniper rifle has the best range and accuracy of any weapon in the game. When she goes into her SuperMode, she can hit any enemy unit from any distance with 100% accuracy. |
| 448 | ** When the Liberty is damaged and in an uncontrollable spin of around two rotations every second and accellerating, Sola shoots the damaged part off the ryder, saving Chigara. |
| 449 | * LoveConfession: [[spoiler:She gives one to Kayto in her ending of ''The Captain's Return'', giving him a surprise kiss and admitting that she fell in love with him while they were living together on Tydaria (though its been implied she had a crush on him for some time before that). He reciprocates her feelings and vows never to make her cry again.]] |
| 450 | * LivingRelic: TheEmpire she almost died to protect has crumbled, and nobody even remembers the war she fought in or whether it was remotely important in the long run. |
| 451 | * MagicalEye: When tapping her Ryuvian Bloodline's innate abilities, Sola's right eye begins glowing unnaturally, the iris turning a vibrant light blue/blue-green and the pupil turning silver-white. [[spoiler:Near the end of the fourth game, this extends to both her eyes after unlocking her full powers]]. |
| 452 | * ManaBurn: Her Reactor Shot affection perk makes her shots deplete the target's Energy when shooting them in the back. |
| 453 | * MeaningfulName: Her name means "lonely" or "alone" in Spanish, befitting her solitary nature and status as a LivingRelic. |
| 454 | * {{Miko}}: She's a shrine maiden in the ''Sunrider Academy'' spinoff game. |
| 455 | * MilesToGoBeforeISleep: Being from thousands of years in the past, she's worried her presence could damage or destroy the timeline. She's resolved to die killing Crow Harbor, the other temporal anomaly, and protect the timeline. [[spoiler:After Crow bites it, her goal becomes protecting Kayto and Asaga while they re-establish Ryuvia]]. |
| 456 | * MysticalWhiteHair: Her snow-white hair hints at her origins as the princess of an ancient kingdom. |
| 457 | * MyMasterRightOrWrong: In ''Liberation Day'', [[spoiler:she witnesses Asaga's descent into paranoia and jealousy, but doesn't alert anyone to the growing problem, because she still considers herself bound to serve the ruler of Ryuvia]]. |
| 458 | * OneHitPolykill: Another unlockable ability in ''The Captain's Return'' -- her shots will pierce through targets, dealing half damage in subsequent hits. |
| 459 | * TheQuietOne: She's a girl of few words. |
| 460 | * ParadoxPerson: [[spoiler:Her ''Sunrider Academy'' counterpart is a "fragment" of the main universe's Sola, and should not exist.]] |
| 461 | * ReducedManaCost: Her Inner Peace perk lets her activate Awakening for free when the Archangel is at full Energy. |
| 462 | * ReiAyanamiExpy: Short white hair, golden eyes, supernatural origins, and a stoic and quiet personality. Bonus points for being described as "The Ayanami" by the developers. |
| 463 | * RetGone: [[spoiler:Her ''Sunrider Academy'' version suffers from "distortions", episodes where parts of her body will randomly (and painfully) fade out of existence. The people who know Sola lose some of their memories of her whenever a distortion happens, and if she were to disappear entirely, everyone would forget her and it would be like she never existed at all. Finding out why this is happening and how to stop it is the crux of her route.]] |
| 464 | * TheScapegoat: What she was to her father, the prince and eventual Emperor of Ruyvia, who forcibly recruited from her simple life once he needed a "spare" child who could use forbidden technology in place of his official heir. While Sola was fine with doing whatever would protect her people, the fact her sacrifices amounted to nothing in the long run has left her rather cynical and depressed. |
| 465 | * ShellShockedVeteran: She's very disdainful if you try and give her a heroic speech about how evil your enemies are, as she's heard it all before. |
| 466 | * SpellMyNameWithAnS: In ''Mask of Arcadius'', the game itself and its promotional materials disagreed on whether the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobiliary_particle nobilary particle]] in her name should be “di” or “vi”, respectively. Come ''Liberation Day'', they seem to have agreed on it being Sola di Ryuvia. |
| 467 | * TheStoic: Very stone-faced and reserved in both words and expressiveness. |
| 468 | * SugarAndIcePersonality: She's stoic, reserved, distant and slow to trust, but loyal to a fault and a kind-natured person at heart. |
| 469 | * SupernaturalGoldEyes: She has amber-gold eyes and she's a descendant of the royal Ryuvian Bloodline. |
| 470 | * SuperMode: Her Awaken skill, which increases Sola's accuracy and damage output for three turns [[CastFromHitPoints at the cost of a few hit points]] (in ''Mask of Arcadius'' and ''Liberation Day'') or a full bar of Energy (''The Captain's Return''). |
| 471 | * TokenReligiousTeammate: Sola is the only member of the crew to express any religious beliefs. While this sometimes leads to situations that could be characterized as BeliefMakesYouStupid, her detailed knowledge of Ryuvian holy texts and religious customs comes in handy more than once. |
| 472 | * WarriorPrincess: She's the Sharr of Ryuvia, a princess required to fight and die if necessary in the Holy Ryuvian Empire's defense. |
| 473 | [[/folder]] |
| 474 | |
| 475 | !!Cera |
| 476 | |
| 477 | [[folder:Maray Shields]] |
| 478 | [[quoteright:299:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/b6f78312_e5bc_411e_84f9_60994065ea60.png]] |
| 479 | [[caption-width-right:299: "Good luck, Kayto!"]] |
| 480 | |
| 481 | Kayto’s goofy little sister. Was killed in the attack on Cera, but plays a major role in ''[[HighSchoolAU Academy]]''. |
| 482 | ---- |
| 483 | * BackupFromOtherworld: [[spoiler:Her spirit appears at the climax of ''The Captain's Return'' and supercharges the Maray's Twin Drives, giving the ship enough power to escape the gravity well of the newborn star.]] |
| 484 | * DeathByOriginStory: She dies in the attack on Cera that kicks off ''First Arrival''. |
| 485 | * LittleSisterHeroine: Subverted, as she isn’t available as a love interest in ''Academy'' despite having the trappings of this, and pokes fun at the idea. |
| 486 | * LostLenore: A major source of grief for Kayto. |
| 487 | * LovableSexManiac: Loves {{eroge}}s and Yaoi, constantly pries into Kayto’s sex life, and passes out from [[EroNosebleed bleeding]] when [[PrettyBoy Fontana]] [[ShirtlessScene takes off his shirt]]. |
| 488 | * PosthumousCharacter: In the main series she dies in the attack on Cera City during the prologue. Thankfully the ''Academy'' version suffers no such fate. |
| 489 | * RomanticWingman: Acts as this in both the Ceran flashback sequences and in ''Academy''. |
| 490 | * ShipperOnDeck: Towards Kayto and Ava in the Ceran flashback, and towards Kayto and whichever girl he picks in ''Academy''. |
| 491 | * YaoiFangirl: She even says “the only love is BoysLove.” |
| 492 | * YouWatchTooMuchX: Kayto tells her she plays too many {{eroge}}s. |
| 493 | [[/folder]] |
| 494 | |
| 495 | [[folder:Miirage Foster]] |
| 496 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sunrider_4_miirage_foster.png]] |
| 497 | %% [[caption-width-right:350:some caption text]] |
| 498 | A Ceran politician who rose to prominence following the Liberation Day massacre. By ''Sunrider 4'', Foster is running for planetary prime minister on a pro-PACT platform. |
| 499 | ---- |
| 500 | * MaliciousSlander: She publically denounces Kayto as a glory-seeking womanizer willing to ally himself with tyrants and monsters in his quest to bring ruin to Cera. In the same breath, she slanders Asaga by calling her "the tyrant queen of Ryuvia". |
| 501 | * NoTrueScotsman: She firmly believes that PACT is a force for good in the galaxy and dismisses its past atrocities as being the work of bad eggs like Cullen and the Prototypes, whom she doesn't consider to be true representatives of PACT. |
| 502 | * TheQuisling: Her party is pro-PACT, even though PACT obliterated Cera's capital city and killed millions of its citizens in the opening days of the war. |
| 503 | [[/folder]] |
| 504 | |
| 505 | !!Solar Alliance |
| 506 | |
| 507 | [[folder:Harold Grey]] |
| 508 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/admiral_harold_grey_3.jpg]] |
| 509 | [[caption-width-right:250:"Sit down boy, and let me show you War."]] |
| 510 | |
| 511 | The commander of the Alliance Fleets, Admiral Grey is your main contact within the Alliance and a sworn enemy of PACT. |
| 512 | ---- |
| 513 | * BadassBoast: "Sit down son, and let me show you war!" |
| 514 | * CharacterDeath: He gets fatally shot by [[spoiler:Chigara]] at the end of ''Liberation Day.'' |
| 515 | * ChestOfMedals: The left breast of his uniform is almost entirely covered with medals. |
| 516 | * FrontlineGeneral: It’s explicitly mentioned that he commands his battles personally. |
| 517 | * GenerationXerox: Comes from a long line of fleet officers. |
| 518 | * TheGhost: In ''Sunrider Academy,'' where a teacher called Mr Grey is often referenced but never appears. |
| 519 | * MeaningfulName: He has more than a few shades of grey in his character. |
| 520 | ** Also carries over to his flagship, dubbed [[Creator/NiccoloMachiavelli Machiavelli Actual,]] reflecting his ruthless approach. |
| 521 | * SouthernGentleman: His character design and manner of speaking resemble this archetype, appropriately enough given that the Alliance is a FantasyCounterpartCulture of America. |
| 522 | * TakingYouWithMe: Attempts this in ''Liberation Day'';[[spoiler:with his dying breaths, he orders deployment of a doomsday weapon salvaged from the Prototypes as a last act of spite towards Fontana and PACT - who he mistakenly believes orchestrated the Liberation Day Massacre - which will destroy the entire planet of Cera and everything around it. Kayto narrowly prevents this by ramming the Sunrider into the Alliance's flagship, Machiavelli Actual, and destroying it before the weapon can be detonated]]. |
| 523 | * WarIsHell: Disapproves of idealistic choices, arguing that they have no place in war. |
| 524 | * WellIntentionedExtremist: Grey may be your ally, but he’s aware war is a DirtyBusiness and will do anything to secure victory. |
| 525 | ** Even though he's willing to cover up the deaths of civilians in the rescue of Kayto Shields, if Kayto presses him about it, he admits that doing so is against everything he and his family stands for and will open a public investigation. |
| 526 | ** Whether it was a bluff or not, he took an entire planet hostage to save his fleet during Battle of Ongess. Ongess was a neutral, not a PACT-affiliated planet, mind you, and currently occupied by Alliance forces. |
| 527 | ** [[spoiler:He had ordered the creation of a planet killer missile, as a contingency. His final order was to use it on Cera, after what he'd perceived to be PACT treachery.]] |
| 528 | [[/folder]] |
| 529 | |
| 530 | [[folder:Edward Storn]] |
| 531 | A former ensign who served aboard the Machiavelli Actual during the Liberation Day ceremony. His testimony during the Trial of Kryska Stares was instrumental in securing the latter's acquittal, earning him a seat on the admiralty board and the ear of the Alliance president. However, there is more to this man than meets the eye... |
| 532 | ---- |
| 533 | * AnArmAndALeg: He sports a prosthetic left arm during the Trial. He later explains to [[spoiler:Veniczar Fontana]] that the original arm froze solid and shattered while he was drifting through space after being blasted out of the Machiavelli Actual. |
| 534 | * CreateYourOwnVillain: [[spoiler:His whole behavior and predicament was the indirect result of Kayto failing to see Chigara as a Prototype spy and, more directly, crashing the Sunrider into the Machiavelli Actual.]] |
| 535 | * DoubleReverseQuadrupleAgent: He's publicly affiliated with the moderate Progress Party, but he secretly has ties to the United Universalists and is a key backer for the militant Hawk Faction. [[spoiler:He's also a spy for PACT.]] |
| 536 | * FatBastard: Storn is on the portly side and is easily the vilest character affiliated with the Solar Alliance to appear in the series. |
| 537 | * TheHedonist: [[spoiler:He's betraying his own nation so he can be rich enough to buy his own private space station and fill it with all the sexy ladies he wants.]] |
| 538 | * HiddenDepths: Was in charge of engineering onboard the Machiavelli Actual, meaning he has deep knowledge in how ship and station systems work. [[spoiler:His time as an aide for the President also meant he had knowledge of the Solar Congress’s systems, thus knowing how to shut down the manual controls for its orbital thrusters.]] |
| 539 | * InformedAbility: When he and Kayto end up in a MexicanStandoff, Storn makes a boast implying that his cybernetic hand has an unbeatably quick trigger finger. He doesn't get the chance to back up that boast, however, [[spoiler:as Kryska blindsides Storn before either man can shoot and beats him to death]]. |
| 540 | * InsaneAdmiral: [[spoiler:This high-ranking admiral is a crazed nihilist perfectly willing to deceive his subordinates and betray his own country for petty and selfish reasons.]] |
| 541 | * TheQuisling: Subverted. [[spoiler:While he is an agent of Fontana, he has as much care for PACT as he has for the Solar Alliance, only in it for himself.]] |
| 542 | * RankUp: He was promoted from Ensign to Rear Admiral and eventually Admiral as a reward for his testimony. |
| 543 | * ShadowArchetype: He is basically an older version of Kayto Shields, complete with his gray hair and eyes, if he gave up the fight against PACT. |
| 544 | * ShellShockedVeteran: He got blown out into space when the Machiavelli Actual blew up, and the time he spent drifting through the vacuum left a lasting impact on his psyche. By his own admission, he finds himself back there every time he closes his eyes, spinning helplessly as his body slowly freezes. |
| 545 | * StrawNihilist: After getting spaced and nearly dying, he concluded that his lifelong career and loyalty to the Solar Alliance had all been meaningless. Now he's only out for himself, doing whatever he needs to satisfy his own hedonistic whims. |
| 546 | [[/folder]] |
| 547 | |
| 548 | [[folder:Alan Grey]] |
| 549 | |
| 550 | The grandson of the late Admiral Grey. A Captain within the Emerald Fleet stationed at Absolute Defense alone at Far Port, he serves as the new contact for the Maray regarding within the Solar Alliance. |
| 551 | |
| 552 | ---- |
| 553 | |
| 554 | * TheCavalryArrivesLate: His fleet arrives late until the very end following the mission to stop [[spoiler:Fontana from gaining access to the World Fountain]]. Justified that the Alliance is at an armistice with PACT, with the Solar Congress run by the more pacifist Progress Party, meaning they had to be hard-pressed by the threat before they decide to do anything. |
| 555 | * {{Foil}}: Unlike his grandfather, Alan has no ambitions whatsoever and has put far more faith in the democratic system despite its failures. |
| 556 | * ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Establishes himself as one far more than his grandfather, hearing out that the Liberation Day Massacre was not entirely their fault and is willing to give them a chance at redemption following the aftermath. He also understands that threat of [[spoiler:Crow Harbor and Fontana getting his hands on said Lost Technology]], even when politics hinders his ability to assist. |
| 557 | |
| 558 | [[/folder]] |
| 559 | |
| 560 | !!People's Alliance For Common Treatment |
| 561 | |
| 562 | [[folder:Veniczar B.(Bas) Cullen]] |
| 563 | [[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/5db99b4c_47db_4c64_8319_ea27b1e97902.png]] |
| 564 | [[caption-width-right:300:"En garde, captain!"]] |
| 565 | |
| 566 | A corpulent admiral within the PACT forces, spearheading their invasion of the Neutral Rim alongside Veniczar Fontana. |
| 567 | ---- |
| 568 | * AdaptationalNiceGuy: His ''Sunrider Academy'' counterpart is arrogant, rude, rather misogynistic and possibly a mob boss but is long way from the sadistic butcher he is in the main series. [[spoiler: Also while he's creepily into the idea of an ArrangedMarriage with his friend's teenage daughter he drops the idea as soon as she informs him she'd rather go out with Kayto, a far cry from the main series' Cullen making rape threats.]] |
| 569 | * BerserkButton: Being called "Veniczar Porkchops" infuriates him. |
| 570 | * TheBrute: He tends to solve his problems through force. |
| 571 | * CharacterDeath: He's killed halfway into Mask of Arcadius when Asaga vaporizes his flagship. |
| 572 | * CripplingOverspecialization: Cullen excels at [[TheBrute fighting aggressively and overwhelming an enemy's defenses]], but he has no idea how to fight a defensive battle himself. Kayto realizes this during the battle of Far Port and [[StraightForTheCommander goes straight for Cullen]], quickly overwhelming him. |
| 573 | * DecapitatedArmy: His death sends the forces under his command into disarray, leaving them easy pickings for the Alliance fleet. |
| 574 | * DirtyOldMan: He's not above trying to molest Asaga when he has her at his mercy, even though she's betrothed to his boss. |
| 575 | * FatBastard: He's obese, a hedonist, and is fond of nuking cities from orbit. |
| 576 | * FormerRegimePersonnel: He originally worked for the [[TheEmpire New Empire]], but defected to PACT to save his own skin. |
| 577 | * GeneralFailure: Cullen may be one of the PACT's highest-ranking admirals, but he's a terrible strategist and most of his victories come down to brute force and overwhelming numbers. When confronted with enemy commanders who are actually competent, he's quickly out of his depth. |
| 578 | * PetTheDog: In ''[[HighSchoolAU Sunrider Academy]]'', he kidnaps Asaga and [[AndNowYouMustMarryMe tries to marry her himself]], but when she tricks him into thinking she’s dating Kayto, he’s fully supportive of it and acts friendly to him. He was also great friends with Asaga’s father. |
| 579 | * SmugSnake: He fancies himself a great commander, but he’s [[GeneralFailure pathetic]]. Even his own comrades mock him. |
| 580 | * StarterVillain: Along with Cossette, he’s the first real threat the ''Sunrider'' goes up against, but he's quickly replaced by the far more competent Fontana. |
| 581 | [[/folder]] |
| 582 | |
| 583 | [[folder:Veniczar B. Fontana]] |
| 584 | [[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/veniczar_b_fontana_portrait.jpg]] |
| 585 | [[caption-width-right:250:"You do not own PACT."[[labelnote:Click here to see Fontana as he appears in Liberation Day]] https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fontana_ld_portrait.jpg[[/labelnote]]]] |
| 586 | |
| 587 | A high ranking admiral within the PACT forces, he is considered to be Arcadius’ right hand man. |
| 588 | ---- |
| 589 | * AlwaysSomeoneBetter: Finds himself superior to Kayto as commander. |
| 590 | %%* TheChessmaster |
| 591 | * ChestOfMedals: By ''The Captain's Return'' he's decked himself out with as many medals as can fit on his chest, reflecting his new position as the leader of PACT. |
| 592 | * CynicismCatalyst: The events of ''Liberation Day'' made him far more distrustful and vengeful towards others. [[spoiler:He lost all faith in the Alliance's trustworthiness after a dying Admiral Gray ordered Cera's destruction in a [[TakingYouWithMe last act of spite]] towards PACT, convincing him the only road to peace was to drive the Alliance out of the Neutral Rim. He also came to resent Kayto for his blind faith in Chigara allowing Alice the means to cause the Liberation Day Massacre - especially when Kayto seemingly put more blame on Fontana simply for retaliating - while Chigara's actions seemed to reaffirm his belief that no Prototype could truly be trusted and that they all needed to be eradicated]]. |
| 593 | * TheDragon: To Arcadius. |
| 594 | * DragonAscendant: By ''The Captain's Return'' he's become the unquestioned dictator of a unified PACT and is actively competing with [[spoiler:Crow Harbor]] for the position of BigBad. |
| 595 | * EvenEvilHasStandards: He's not too blind over his obedience to Arcadius. Knowing the true Arcadius, he is disheartened over PACT's path of bloodshed and the current Arcadius's SanitySlippage. When Arcadius goes too far, he exposes the one behind the mask and seizes control PACT. Even after Kayto earns his ''very'' personal enmity after ''Liberation Day'', he still maintains some decorum to him and his crew by wanting them arrested over just shooting them dead on sight. [[spoiler:In ''The Captain's Return'', he not only accepts Kayto's surrender but agrees to let Kayto's crew go free in return, willing to let them off the hook as mere accessories to Kayto's actions so long as he gets the man himself locked up]]. |
| 596 | * {{Foil}}: |
| 597 | ** To Grey, high-ranking admirals with a decent reputation as commanders. Fontana uses HonorBeforeReason and clear use of wits, whereas Grey is willing to use dirty, underhanded methods. |
| 598 | ** To Kayto, young commanders who were caught in the middle of a warzone, growing up to be legendary commanders, but Fontana fights for ideals while Kayto has more personal motives. |
| 599 | ** To Kryska, as both suffered oppression from the New Empire and related Neutral Rim worlds until they were saved. Kryska believes in the Solar Alliance and its ideals of freedom, whereas Fontana believes in the communist ideal of equality. |
| 600 | * GodzillaThreshold: [[spoiler:After killing Crow Harbor, Fontana plots to take command of the World Fountain for himself and effectively make PACT the new supreme power of the galaxy - and himself as its' sovereign "protector"]]. |
| 601 | * HeelFaceRevolvingDoor: Starts out as TheDragon before betraying Arcadius, but is tricked into starting war with the Alliance, but is still trying not to descend into Arcadius’ insanity. %% Come back to this. |
| 602 | * HeWhoFightsMonsters: Villainous example; for all his good intentions in wanting to subvert both the Solar Alliance's inequalities and later on Alice's own madness, the events of ''Liberation Day'' cause him to start developing his own MoralMyopia with how his efforts and his willingness to forge alliances backfired on him as a result of Kayto's decisions. By the time of ''The Captain's Return'', he's started gaining an aura of self-superiority not entirely unlike Alice's when she was in charge, [[spoiler:and in the post-credits scene he outright discards his scruples regarding the Prototypes by planning to use a captive Alpha to help take down Kayto]]. |
| 603 | * HiddenDepths: Behind his MaliciousSlander of Shields and his attempts to put him down, his actions are more than just his hate for [[spoiler:his role in the Liberation Day Massacre]]. During a conversation with Kuushana, he shares that he is actually scared of Shields upon [[spoiler:swearing revenge on him for killing Chigara]] and even as [[spoiler:Veniczar of all of PACT]], he will never have the power to quell Kayto’s oath of revenge. |
| 604 | * HeroKiller: [[spoiler:He kills Chigara for being Alice's triggerman in the Liberation Day Massacre, causing the first major character death of Kayto's crew]]. |
| 605 | * MaliciousSlander: Fontana takes every opportunity to smear Kayto's name in Sunrider 4, calling him everything from a murderer of children to a sexual deviant. This reaches its peak after he [[spoiler:kills Crow Harbor and captures Kayto: the PACT PropagandaMachine paints Kayto as TheQuisling to Crow, claiming that he would have sold the whole galaxy to the time-traveling warlord just to set himself up as the petty dictator of Cera]]. |
| 606 | * MoralEventHorizon: [[spoiler:He nearly crosses it in ''The Captain's Return'' when he orders his fleet to pursue Kayto through a star's flareup, doing the exact thing he betrayed Alice over; sacrificing his men in the name of destroying those he hates, even ignoring Kuushana's warnings the way Alice ignored his own advice. Only when a swath of his fleet gets slagged by the star's fluctuating corona does he snap back to his senses and order a retreat]]. |
| 607 | * MotiveDecay: Through much of the fourth game, it gradually becomes apparent that Fontana's [[SlowlySlippingIntoEvil slowly slipping]] into a lighter shade of what Alice was; a trauma-fueled zealot obsessed with getting back at those he felt betrayed his trust. While he retains enough of a moral compass to only hate the Solar Alliance and Kayto for the damage they cased as opposed to all of humanity, the depths his hatred go are eerily similar to his predecessor. [[spoiler: The most blatant show of this hate is when he has a captured Kayto brutally tortured to try and make him sign a confession to war-crimes, sporting a look of manic glee and ranting how he'll break Kayto into being little more than a loyal dog to him. He also confesses to Kuushana in private that his relentless hunt for Kayto is because he's ''just that afraid'' of what the man's vengeance on him will be as opposed to just the welfare of PACT. After Kayto escapes and costs him the World Fountain along with a chunk of the PACT fleet, TheStinger shows him preparing to do the [[{{Hypocrite}} very same thing he vilified Kayto for]] in his pursuit of "justice"; collaborating with a Prototype - in his case, the captive Alpha]]. |
| 608 | * NiceJobFixingItVillain: In ''Sunrider 4'', Fontana captures Kayto and begins trying to break his will through gaslighting and torture, intending to reforge his enemy into a fanatically devoted servant of PACT. He comes within a hair's breadth of achieving this, but right as he's about to have Kayto sign a confession and swear loyalty to the cause, he declares that the two of them will hunt down the Prototypes together. [[spoiler:This reminds Kayto of Chigara and brings back the memory of her death at Fontana's hands, reigniting Kayto's hatred.]] |
| 609 | * NobleTopEnforcer: He believes quite strongly in PACT's communist creed, and privately expresses concern at how brutal towards civilians/commoners it has been, as well as Arcadius' increasing megalomania. During the Battle of Ongess, he breaks off the attack to spare the population of Ongess. Again, he threw away an opportunity to end the Alliance military to spare some random [[CrapsackWorld hellhole]] of a planet that he or his faction has no connection to whatsoever. |
| 610 | * OhCrap: Fontana is left in stunned, slack-jawed disbelief when he sees [[spoiler:the Prototype super-dreadnought]] that just came out of warp to back Shields up at the battle of [[spoiler:the World Fountain]]. |
| 611 | * PetTheDog: He's introduced saving Asaga from the unwanted advances of the [[SmugSnake loathsome]] Veniczar Cullen (and insulting him for good measure), indicating his noble qualities right away. |
| 612 | * PrettyBoy: Several characters comment on his attractive looks. PlayedForLaughs in ''Sunrider Academy'', where he initially gets the entire female student body's vote simply because of his good looks, and the "secret weapon" he employs during the final campaign speech is simply him [[ShirtlessScene ripping off his shirt]] [[{{Fanservice}} to let the ladies have their fill of the eye candy]]. |
| 613 | * TitleDrop: [[spoiler:Does this with the series' own name in ''The Captain's Return'', after Kayto literally surfs the shockwave of a fluctuating star's corona]] |
| 614 | -->'''Fontana:''' [[spoiler:He has become... the Sunrider.]] |
| 615 | * TookALevelInJerkass: ''The Captain's Return'' reveals the events of ''Liberation Day'' were something of a CynicismCatalyst for him, [[spoiler:between Kayto's inadvertently causing the Liberation Day Massacre with his denial over Chigara's being a Prototype and Gray's attempted use of the Paradox Core in a TakingYouWithMe attempt]]. While before he was content to have peace and negotiate, the aftermath sees him wanting nothing less than total victory over the Solar Alliance and waging six years of war to completely drive them out of the Rim. He also becomes far more malicious towards Kayto for the latter's role in in ''Liberation Day'', taking every chance he can to mock and deride him, and has grown willing to even risk his men's safety just to settle the grudge. |
| 616 | * VillainHasAPoint: While he certainly TookALevelInJerkass in the fourth installment, and through all of the MaliciousSlander, he is not wrong about Kayto causing more harm than good to the galaxy. The most obvious example is his emotional attachment to [[spoiler:the Prototypes]], namely [[spoiler:Chigara]], which [[spoiler:blew his chance for a happy ending and true peace with PACT via the Liberation Day Massacre]]. He is also not wrong about them still being a threat to the galaxy despite losing so much influence. [[spoiler:Kayto agrees they have become unhinged after his rescue from the Prototypes, admits the Chigara he knew is long gone and that it's all his fault he didn't realize this sooner.]] |
| 617 | * VillainousRescue: He arrives at the World Fountain with PACT's entire navy, just in time to save the Maray from [[spoiler:Crow Harbor]]. Saving them is completely incidental to Fontana's goals though; as soon as [[spoiler:Crow Harbor]] is space dust, he declares that Kayto is under arrest. |
| 618 | * VillanousValour: Compared to the [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil hedonistic slob]] Cullen or the [[AxCrazy bloodthirsty]] Arcadius, Fontana is one of the more moral leaders up until Kuushana's introduction and, even after [[TookALevelInJerkass growing more vindictive]] after ''Liberation Day'', he still shows more of a nobler side than his predecessors. |
| 619 | ** In ''First Arrival'', he chases Cullen away from trying to molest Asaga, clearly disgusted his peer would stoop to such a low. |
| 620 | ** In ''Mask of Arcadius'', he abandons a sure victory at Ongess when Admiral Gray threatens to detonate the volatile fuel stores mined from the planet, unwilling to sacrifice the countless lives - civilian and combatant alike - that would be caught in the destruction. Later on, in order to save the PACT fleet from being destroyed as collateral damage in Alice/Arcadius's madness, Fontana outright usurps them by publicly unmasking them as a fake. |
| 621 | ** In ''Liberation Day'', he's quite willing to work with long-time enemies like Admiral Gray and Captain Shields for the greater good [[spoiler:and eliminate the insane Alice to reform PACT. When the Liberation Day Massacre happens, he takes no joy at his enemy's leadership being butchered and straight-up shoots Chigara (who'd orchestrated it via [[DemonicPossession possession by Alice]]) in retaliation for what she's done]]. |
| 622 | ** In ''The Captain's Return'', [[spoiler:despite having grown more cynical and vindictive in the six-year timeskip, he's willing to declare the war between PACT and the Solar Alliance over once the latter are out of the Neutral Rim instead of continuing Alice's crusade any further. In turn, when he has Kayto over a barrel, he accepts Kayto's plea to let the rest of his crew go in return for his own surrender]]. |
| 623 | * WakeUpCallBoss: He's this in-story, proving to be a lot more cunning and effective than Veniczar Cullen was. |
| 624 | * YouFool: Calls Kayto out on his naivety after [[spoiler:he let Chigara end up killing everyone during the Liberation Day ceremony]]. |
| 625 | [[/folder]] |
| 626 | |
| 627 | [[folder:Veniczar Arcadius]] |
| 628 | [[quoteright:214:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/428px_arcadius_portrait_2.png]] |
| 629 | [[caption-width-right:214:"HAHAHAHA!!!"[[labelnote:Click here to see Arcadius unmasked (spoiler)]] https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/arcadius_unmasked.png[[/labelnote]]]] |
| 630 | [[caption-width-right:214:"Humanity will find no salvation from us."[[labelnote:Click here to see true self (spoiler)]] https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/alice_2.png[[/labelnote]]]] |
| 631 | The leader of PACT, a former revolutionary who now aspires to conquer the galaxy. There is more to Arcadius than first appears, for under that mask lies an awfully familiar face... |
| 632 | ---- |
| 633 | * AndNowYouMustMarryMe: Tries to force Asaga to marry him to gain control of the secrets of ancient Ryuvia. |
| 634 | * ArtificialHuman: The current Arcadius is one of the Prototypes. |
| 635 | * AttackDrones: The [[spoiler:Nightmare Ascendant]] can deploy dozens of [[Franchise/{{Gundam}} Funnel]]-like flier drones that provide shielding for his underlings and can tear apart a small fleet of Alliance ships in the blink of an eye. |
| 636 | * BetaTestBaddie: [[spoiler:She was the first Prototype, with all other Prototypes except Alpha being made in her image. ''[RE]turn'' suggests that her creators meant to discard her once Alpha was completed, and that she did not take it well (see TomatoInTheMirror, below).]] |
| 637 | * BigBad: As the leader of PACT. [[spoiler:Though she’s not the only one.]] |
| 638 | * BigBadDuumvirate: [[spoiler:She works alongside Alpha and Claude, but is planning to betray them to achieve [[OmnicidalManiac her own ends]].]] |
| 639 | * BodySurf: [[spoiler:Thanks to the Prototypes' HiveMind, killing her off for good is nearly impossible: even if her original body is destroyed, she can just take control of another Prototype.]] |
| 640 | * CharClone: Wears a mask, pilots an AceCustom Ryder, is searching for ancient Ryuvian LostTechnology for unknown reasons, and [[spoiler:is effectively Chigara’s “sister”, due to them both being Prototypes]]. As a charismatic dictator, fits the BigBad type of Char Clone. [[spoiler:Between her being a BetaTestBaddie and an OmnicidalManiac, and manipulating the two major factions, Alice is practically a female [[Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED Rau le Creuset]].]] |
| 641 | * DeadPersonImpersonation: The real Arcadius has been dead since the end of the PACT Revolution that toppled the New Empire. The "Arcadius" that you fight is actually Alice Ashada and her proxies. |
| 642 | * TheDragon: [[spoiler:''Liberation Day'' reveals her to be this to Alpha, [[DragonWithAnAgenda though their endgame goals are nothing alike.]]]] |
| 643 | * DramaticUnmask: Fontana unmasks him at the climax of ''Mask of Arcadius'', revealing the fact that Arcadius [[SamusIsAGirl is a woman]] who [[IdenticalStranger looks exactly like Chigara]]. |
| 644 | %%* EvilOverlord: As the leader of PACT. |
| 645 | * FinalBoss: Piloting the [[MileLongShip Legion]] in ''Mask of Arcadius'' and the [[spoiler:[[LostSuperweapon Nightmare Ascendant]]]] in ''Liberation Day''. |
| 646 | * GalacticConqueror: Plots to conquer all Alliance worlds and other worlds under the guise of "liberation". |
| 647 | * GoodScarsEvilScars: When unmasked, he's the only character in the game to have facial scars, and is unquestionably a villain. |
| 648 | * GrandTheftMe: At the end of ''Liberation Day'', [[spoiler:Alice's consciousness uses the Hive-Mind to hijack control of Chigara and massacre the delegates present. Kayto manages to get through to Chigara, but she's killed immediately after]]. |
| 649 | * TheHeavy: He's the one who leads the enemy force of PACT. [[spoiler:And even though she’s technically working for Alpha, she’s the one who actively antagonizes the heroes. She also betrays her cohorts to destroy humanity.]] |
| 650 | * HeWhoFightsMonsters: He was once a heroic revolutionary fighting against the [[TheEmpire New Empire]], and wants to free the galaxy from the evils of imperialism [[spoiler:and [[HumansAreBastards humanity]]]]. But by the time of the game, he's become a tyrannical, bloodthirsty EvilOverlord GalacticConqueror. |
| 651 | * HiveQueen: [[spoiler:Downplayed. She’s working for Alpha, but can still employ some control over the other Prototypes [[DragonWithAnAgenda and outright have them disobey Alpha if she so desires]].]] |
| 652 | * HumansAreBastards: [[spoiler:She came to this conclusion after watching the original Arcadius get torn to shreds by the very people he’d championed. ''[RE]turn'' suggests that she already felt this way due to being exploited by her creators, and that Arcadius’ death merely reinforced it.]] |
| 653 | * {{Hypocrite}}: Talks a lot about freeing the people, but shows all the signs of being an EvilOverlord, including being an unrepentant genocidal butcher. |
| 654 | * IAmLegion: She has an army of {{Expendable Clone}}s of herself, all of whom [[HiveMind share a single mind]]. |
| 655 | * JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: [[spoiler:When she discovered her true nature, her response was to ''blow up her home planet of Diode.'']] |
| 656 | * KillAllHumans: [[spoiler:Her real goal, which [[EnemyCivilWar puts her at odds]] with Alpha and Claude.]] |
| 657 | * LegacyCharacter: The original Arcadius died some time before the story began, with Alice (and her proxies) having taken up his mantle. |
| 658 | * LoveMakesYouEvil: [[spoiler:She loved the original Arcadius, but his death at the hands of the people he'd liberated convinced her that HumansAreBastards and should be wiped out.]] |
| 659 | * MagicalEye: [[spoiler:She has the same glowing eyes and Sharr powers as Asaga and Sola, due to "Sharr Myrren's ghost coursing through her veins".]] |
| 660 | * MalevolentMaskedMan: Wears a creepy mask with pointed ears at all times. [[spoiler:She ditches it in ''Liberation Day''.]] |
| 661 | * NighInvulnerable: The [[spoiler:Nightmare Ascendant]] can shrug off a direct hit from the Sunrider's Vanguard Cannon with no damage, and it takes the firepower of a combined Alliance-PACT fleet ''plus'' another shot from the Vanguard to finally destroy it. In gameplay terms, it actually has more health than the [[MileLongShip Legion]]. |
| 662 | * OmnicidalManiac: [[spoiler:After Arcadius was been killed by the same people he'd just liberated, Alice decided to wipe out all humans.]] |
| 663 | * RoyalWe: Refers to himself with plurals like “we”, “us” or "ours", [[spoiler:foreshadowing her true nature as a collective rather than an individual]]. |
| 664 | * SamusIsAGirl: "He" is revealed to be a woman under that mask at the climax of ''Mask of Arcadius''. |
| 665 | * SplitPersonalityMerge: At the end of ''Liberation Day'', [[spoiler:Alice's personality merges with Chigara's inside the Hive Mind, with her statement of "CHIGARA'S COMING FOR YOU!" indicating Alice's hatred of humanity has twisted Chigara into a yandere]]. |
| 666 | * SelfMadeOrphan: [[spoiler:Killed her creator with her own hands.]] |
| 667 | %%* TheStarscream: [[spoiler:To Alpha.]] |
| 668 | * StartOfDarkness: ''Sunrider: Veniczar'', a prequel novel focusing on their turn to evil. |
| 669 | * TomatoInTheMirror: [[spoiler:The ''[RE]turn'' scenario and ''Sunrider: Veniczar'' suggests that Alice was raised to believe she was an ordinary human and the daughter of Project Paradox's director. When she discovered the truth (and learned that she was going to be replaced), she underwent SanitySlippage and became a SelfMadeOrphan.]] |
| 670 | * VillainOverride: Assumes direct control of [[spoiler:Chigara at the end of ''Liberation Day'', leading to a massacre]]. |
| 671 | * WalkingSpoiler: It's very difficult to discuss Arcadius without getting into their true identity. |
| 672 | * WellIntentionedExtremist: He claims to be fighting against imperialism and tyranny, but is willing to commit atrocities in order to do so. [[spoiler:Turns out she just wants to KillAllHumans, because she believes that [[HumansAreBastards humans are intristically tyrannical and the galaxy would be better without them]].]] |
| 673 | * YouAreNumber6: [[spoiler:Her designation is Prototype 4L1C3.]] |
| 674 | [[/folder]] |
| 675 | |
| 676 | [[folder:Veniczar A. Kuushana]] |
| 677 | !!!Voiced by: Nakase Hina (JP) |
| 678 | %%[[quoteright:164:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/4747128c_60ce_4457_887d_d2cee9ed8f05.jpeg]] |
| 679 | %%[[quoteright:164:[[labelnote:Click here to see Kuushana as she appears in ''Sunrider 4'']]https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sunrider_4_kuushana.png[[/labelnote]]]] |
| 680 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sunrider_4_kuushana.png]] |
| 681 | [[caption-width-right:350:Kuushana as she appears in ''Sunrider 4'']] |
| 682 | ->''"Now, let us settle this once and for all: Who is the greater captain, you or I?"'' |
| 683 | |
| 684 | |
| 685 | An elite female Veniczar who was exiled by Aracdius when she was disgusted with PACT's bloodshed. Introduced in the end of Liberation Day, she leads the PACT fleets once again to strike back against the Solar Alliance. |
| 686 | ---- |
| 687 | * TheAce: She's regarded as PACT's best commander and treated as synonymous with victory by the time of the fourth game. |
| 688 | * AceCustom: She and her Wolf Brigade pilot the most advanced Ryders in PACT's arsenal, based on the specs of the Nightmare Ascendant. Her specific machine is tricked out beyond even that. |
| 689 | * AnimalMotif: Wolves. One of her titles is the Crimson Wolf, she leads an elite Ryder squadron called the Wolf Brigade, and her personal Ryder is called Wolf-1. |
| 690 | * BeatThemAtTheirOwnGame: Comes across as this, as she commands an upgraded variant of Kayto's Sunrider in the fourth game. [[spoiler:In the endgame, this gets flipped on her when Kayto turns the tables and does [[{{Irony}} the very same thing Kuushana made a name for herself doing to others]]; pulling off a miraculous win against a superior fighting force]]. |
| 691 | * ChestOfMedals: She has five or six medals pinned to her uniform, rather modest in comparison to Admiral Grey. |
| 692 | * CustomUniform: An odd example, as she does wear what looks like an actual military uniform, but she's the only PACT commander to do so, the others wearing outfits that look like they came from an 18th/19th century European aristocract's wardrobe. |
| 693 | * CuttingTheKnot: At one point, Kayto tries to trick her into following him into an asteroid field, hoping that the Huntress will get stuck amongst the rocks so his Ryders can tear her apart. She doesn't take the bait, instead destroying the whole asteroid field with one "full spread mode" shot of the Huntress's Vanguard Cannon. |
| 694 | * DavidVsGoliath: If Fontana's talk is any indication, she's made a career out of defeating New Empire fleets using forces a fraction of their size. In ''The Captian's Return'', she is instead the Goliath to Kayto's David: her Wolf Squadron has better Ryders, she has a better flagship, she has a vast fleet to draw upon versus Kayto's one ship, and she's at least as good of a strategist as him if not better. [[spoiler:In the Battle for the World Fountain, Kayto ultimately gives Kuushana a taste of her own medicine by beating her superior forces with his unorthodox tactics, earning both her respect and her vow to personally take him down]]. |
| 695 | * DefectorFromDecadence: Left PACT after getting fed up with Arcadius. |
| 696 | * EveryoneHasStandards: She really disliked how Alice did things, including the Sack of New Eden that devastated the Imperial elites and killed the first Arcadius. Upon her Rousing Speech, she declares to have the People's Alliance reformed back into LaResistance. [[spoiler:In ''The Captain's Return'', she becomes something of a MoralityChain for Fontana as he struggles not to let his fear of Kayto's vendetta turn him into another Alice]]. |
| 697 | * EvilKnockoff: Kuushana is given her own Sunrider-class ship, the Huntress, with which to hunt down Kayto. Kayto, understandably, isn't happy to learn that his enemy is essentially using his old ship against him. |
| 698 | -->'''Kayto:''' (''Seething'') You... You have my ship.\ |
| 699 | '''Kuushana:''' (''Smirking'') Your ship? I'm afraid not. The Huntress is a far cry from the obsolete vessel you once commanded during the early years of the Neutral Rim War. |
| 700 | * ExcuseMeWhileIMultitask: She demonstrates her tactical chops at the climax of ''The Captain's Return'' by directing both the macro-level battle against [[spoiler:the Prototypes]] and the micro-level battle against the Maray while simultaneously duking it out with Kayto's Ryders in her own machine. |
| 701 | * TheExile: She was banished by Alice for disagreeing with her ruthless leadership and tactics. Once Alice is dead, Fontana lifts her exile and reinstates her as High Admiral of the Crimson Fleet. |
| 702 | * {{Expy}}: Between her name, hairstyle, and position as a high-ranking military commander of an expansionist empire, she's a dead ringer for the Kushana from ''Manga/NausicaaOfTheValleyOfTheWind''. |
| 703 | * FrontlineGeneral: The High Admiral of the PACT Navy has no qualms about jumping into a Ryder's cockpit and taking the fight directly to the enemy at the head of her personal Wolf Brigade squadron. This also doubles as a FatalFlaw however as, while she ''can'' multitask commanding all the different levels of battle at once, it ultimately leaves the PACT fleet overreliant on her leadership. |
| 704 | * FatalFlaw: As good a leader as she is (and she ''[[ExcuseMeWhileIMultitask is]]'' very good), her insistence on running every aspect of battle herself makes her forces practically dependent on her at every level of command for any battle she's part of - so in the event she's actually taken out of the fight, her forces are left reeling to try and coordinate on their own. |
| 705 | * TheMenFirst: When the Huntress is finally sunk, she gives the order to abandon ship and commands nearby ships to prioritize rescuing its crew over continuing to pursue the Maray. |
| 706 | * [[MrExposition Ms. Expostition]]: Explains the driving force of the previous Arcadius before Fontana took the seat. |
| 707 | * MirrorBoss: She fights with a small squad of elite ryders supported by a powerful ship, making her tactics and units very similar to your own from the first games. |
| 708 | * RecurringBoss: Depending on whether you count the RunOrDie sequence in Chapter 5 as a boss fight, Kuushana is fought four or five times over the course of ''Sunrider 4''. |
| 709 | * RedBaron: Kuushana of the Many Miracles, in reference to her ability to pull off nearly impossible victories against vastly larger and better-equipped enemy forces. She's also known and feared as the Crimson Wolf. |
| 710 | * RememberTheNewGuy: Fontana and Kuushana are close acquaintances of one another, but she isn't even mentioned until the end of ''Liberation Day''. Somewhat justified, as she ''was'' in exile since before the start of the first game. |
| 711 | * TheRevolutionWillNotBeVillified: Declares to act on the savagery of PACT, reforming it into a highly disciplined army against the Solar Alliance. |
| 712 | * WalkingSpoiler: At least, the fact that she comes back is. |
| 713 | * WorthyOpponent: She grows to respect Kayto over the course of ''The Captain's Return''. [[spoiler:By the climax of the Battle of the World Fountain, she challenges Kayto to prove which of them is the greater captain and which has the superior ship. When Kayto pulls off his spectacular victory and gets away scott-free, Kuushana is clearly impressed, though she vows that PACT will get him one day]]. |
| 714 | -->'''Kuushana:''' Heh... You are quite the man, Shields. But the People's Alliance will pursue you. The chain around your neck has only gotten tighter. |
| 715 | |
| 716 | [[/folder]] |
| 717 | |
| 718 | [[folder:Jem'hyre]] |
| 719 | Kuushana's right-hand woman, Jem'hyre is the sniper of the Wolf Brigade. |
| 720 | ---- |
| 721 | * AceCustom: Her version of the Su-09 trades out the standard assault gun for a large laser cannon, making shields a necessity when she takes the field. |
| 722 | * BeamSpam: In later battles, she can use a special command where she shoots all the player's units at the start of the enemy's phase. |
| 723 | * EvilCounterpart: To Sola. Both are stoic, soft-spoken waifs who act as the snipers of their respective Ryder squadrons and serve their leaders with loyalty. [[spoiler:She even has her own version of Sola's Sharr powers.]] |
| 724 | * InTheHood: When she isn't piloting a Ryder, she's wearing a big, bulky cloak with the hood pulled down over her head. |
| 725 | * RedEyesTakeWarning: Her left eye glows red when tapping into her powers. |
| 726 | [[/folder]] |
| 727 | |
| 728 | !!The Prototypes |
| 729 | |
| 730 | [[folder:The Prototypes]] |
| 731 | The Prototypes are a race of identical vat-grown women with genetically-enhanced intelligence and a HiveMind. They view themselves as superior to humanity and seek to control mankind from the shadows. |
| 732 | |
| 733 | The following tropes apply to the Prototypes as a whole: |
| 734 | ---- |
| 735 | * ArtificialHuman: They’re churned out in bulk at a secret cloning facility. |
| 736 | * BigBad: Collectively, they are the main antagonists of the series. They act as TheManBehindTheMan to [=PACT=] through their proxy Arcadius in the first two games, and while they take a back seat for most of ''The Captain's Return'', they re-enter the BigBadEnsemble under Omega's leadership near the end of that game. |
| 737 | * CloneArmy: L7 models like [=L7NN=] are meant to carry out the will of their leaders in battle. The numerous “Arcadiuses” fought at the end of ''Mask of Arcadius'' were L7 Prototypes, and they continue to harass the Sunrider throughout ''Liberation Day''. |
| 738 | * FantasticCasteSystem: According to Lynn, individual Prototypes are created to fulfill specific purposes and belong to specific models or types. Lynn alternately describes herself as a warrior or pilot model, Chigara is a spy model, and so on. |
| 739 | * HatedByAll: By ''Sunrider 4'', the Prototypes are near universally despised for their part in perpetrating the Neutral Rim War to kill off all of humanity, infiltrating all places of society to enslave them, and [[spoiler:being behind the Liberation Day massacre]]. Most governments seemingly have orders to shoot them on sight. |
| 740 | * HiveMind: They are linked together by one called the mind stream. [[HiveQueen Alpha]] is the source of it, and high-ranking Prototypes like Alpha and Alice use the mind stream to send a constant stream of telepathic commands to the lesser Prototypes. |
| 741 | * HoneyTrap: [=L7NN=] claims that this is the entire purpose of C8 models like Chigara. They’re sent out to seduce specific individuals and are "personalized" in accordance with the target's tastes, which may explain why Kayto and Chigara fell for each other so quickly. |
| 742 | * IdenticalTwinIDTag: Apart from their clothing, all of the plot-relevant Prototypes have some trait that visually distinguishes them from the lesser Prototypes. Chigara has her hair ribbon, Alice keeps her hair swept up and slicked back and also has a prominent facial scar, and Alpha has paler hair that she keeps in curls. Lynn likewise wears a cat-eared Q-Jammer headband in ''Sunrider 4''. |
| 743 | * ManBehindTheMan: Collectively they are this to PACT during the first game, as Veniczar Arcadius is just a persona they adopted. They stop being this once Fontana exposes Arcadius’s true nature to the galaxy, though they claim to already “own everything” regardless. |
| 744 | * MeaningfulName: They’re called Prototypes because they were all prototypes for Alpha, the culmination of their creator’s efforts. |
| 745 | * SciFiBobHaircut: The rank-and-file Prototypes all have this hairstyle. |
| 746 | * SpeakInUnison: In ''Sunrider 4'', the rank-and-file Prototypes profess their slavish devotion to Kayto in perfect, disturbing unison once they have him in their clutches. |
| 747 | * SuperIntelligence: The Prototypes are naturally smarter than any ordinary human. Even without the assistance of their hive mind, every one of them is a GadgeteerGenius able to invent machines on par with, or superior to, the most advanced conventional equivalents. |
| 748 | * {{Telepathy}}: They are able to communicate with each other through “hyper brain waves”. ''Sunrider 4'' shows that they can communicate with Kayto the same way. |
| 749 | * TurnedAgainstTheirMasters: They were originally created by scientists on the planet Diode for an unknown purpose. Once Alpha was created and their HiveMind formed, they decided they didn’t need to take orders and caused the Diode Catastrophe, wiping out their makers. |
| 750 | * UterineReplicator: They’re grown in nutrient-filled tubes. |
| 751 | * VillainOverride: Higher-ranked Prototypes like Alpha and Alice can take control of the lesser Prototypes whenever they want, [[IAmLegion turning them into extensions of the higher-ranked Prototypes]]. |
| 752 | * WalkingSpoiler: Thier existence as Arcadius makes them this. |
| 753 | * WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: Several characters consider them to be something less than human. Grey and Fontana both call the Prototypes twisted monsters born of science. No one has any qualms about killing them, although that part is justified since there ''is'' a war going on and the Prototypes are enemy combatants, and a HiveMind. |
| 754 | * YouAreNumber6: They have alphanumeric designations like [=L7NN=] and 4L1C3 instead of proper names. The only exception is their leader Alpha. The first two characters seem to be like a model number, as [=L7NN=] explains that L7 Prototypes like herself are meant to act as warriors while C8 Prototypes are meant to act as spies and {{Honey Trap}}s. |
| 755 | [[/folder]] |
| 756 | |
| 757 | [[folder:Prototype [=L7NN=]/Lynn]] |
| 758 | [[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/b28e466f_9975_4da0_a13c_f31aec78e31d.png]] |
| 759 | [[caption-width-right:300:"We are all the children of Diode."]] |
| 760 | [[quoteright:300:[[labelnote:Click here to see Lynn as she appears in ''Sunrider 4'']]https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sunrider_4_lynn_8.png[[/labelnote]]]] |
| 761 | |
| 762 | Lynn is the only one of Arcadius's clones to survive the Battle of Helion. She's taken captive at the beginning of ''Sunrider Liberation Day'', but while she proves to be a valuable source of information on the Prototypes, her insinuations and uncanny resemblance to Chigara begin to spread distrust among the Sunrider's crew. |
| 763 | |
| 764 | Lynn joins the crew in ''Sunrider 4'' with the Dominator, an electronic warfare Ryder that can cripple enemy units with status effects, hack incoming missiles to send them back at their launchers, and deploy drones to repair friends or blast foes. |
| 765 | ---- |
| 766 | * AbusiveParents: Really, both versions of her are dealing with this, if you stretch the definition of "parent" a bit: |
| 767 | ** In ''Liberation Day'' [[spoiler: her creators, Alice and Alpha, use her as a disposable weapon against the Sunrider, actively seek to kill her rather than let the Sunrider crew keep her for questioning (despite [=L7NN=] remaining loyal and even trying, somewhat successfully, to sow distrust among the crew) and they can and will take over her mind whenever they find it useful to do so.]] |
| 768 | ** In ''Sunrider Academy'' [[spoiler: she is her parents' naturally born daughter but they were disappointed that she was not living up to their expectations so they cloned her and adjusted the DNA to create Chigara, a perfect daughter that looks identical to Lynn but received all the love and attention they withheld from Lynn.]] |
| 769 | * BedTrick: Pulls this on Kayto in ''Academy''[='=]s Chigara route by pretending to be Chigara and having sex with him. |
| 770 | * BigBad: In ''Academy''[='=]s Chigara route, during which she attempts to steal Kayto away from Chigara. |
| 771 | * CombatMedic: Downplayed in ''Sunrider 4''. The Dominator can use its drones to harm enemies or heal allies, but not both: you must choose whether the drones will restore health or do damage before the start of each mission. |
| 772 | * CompositeCharacter: ''Sunrider Academy's'' Lynn has [=L7NN=]'s name (more or less), appearence (essentially Chigara without her hairband and with a sour expression) and attitude (grumpy). However her backstory more resembles Alice [[spoiler: by virtue of being passed over for a "superior" clone of herself. Kayto even references this somewhat by LeaningOnTheFourthWall and saying that in another universe they must be archenemies. [=L7NN=] is an enemy but hardly an archenemy, Alice certainly was.]] |
| 773 | * DroneDeployer: The Dominator can deploy swarms of flier drones which will either harm all enemies or heal all allies in an area-of-effect, depending on how you've spec'd it out. |
| 774 | * EmbarrassingNickname: Snarkadius. |
| 775 | * TheEngineer: Taking over from Chigara, Lynn keeps the Maray running and manages both Prototype and Ryuvian technology, providing most of the technical exposition and solutions for the team. |
| 776 | * GreenEyedMonster: To Chigara in ''Academy'', [[spoiler: since her parents made Chigara as a perfect version of her.]] |
| 777 | * HeelFaceTurn: By the end of ''Liberation Day'', she starts to gain affection for Kayto and can be pressed into working for him. And by the end of Chigara’s route in ''Academy'', she lets go of Kayto and accepts his relationship with her sister. |
| 778 | * HoistByTheirOwnPetard: The Dominator's [=RTN2SNDR=] ability hacks an incoming enemy missile, changing its target to whoever launched it. Thus, it is possible to destroy an enemy unit with its own missiles, provided that those missiles don't get shot down on the way back to their launcher. |
| 779 | * IdenticalStranger: To Chigara. |
| 780 | * InSeriesNickname: Kayto dubs her "Snarkadius" for her snarky attitude in ''Sunrider 4'', much to her annoyance. |
| 781 | * LovingAShadow: In ''Academy'', Kayto claims the only reason why she’s so [[{{Yandere}} attached]] to him is that she’s compensating for being TheUnfavorite, and trying to show up Chigara. |
| 782 | * ManipulativeBastard: She plays on Ava's suspicions that Chigara is both a Prototype and the source of a vital information leak on the Sunrider’s movements, and fans the flames of Asaga’s resentment toward Chigara into paranoia and hatred. |
| 783 | * MrExposition: She divulges a lot of information about how the Prototypes work. |
| 784 | * TheParalyzer: The Dominator's Disable ability shuts down a single enemy unit for one turn, preventing them from moving or taking any action. |
| 785 | * ThePardon: Lynn struck a deal with Asaga during the six-year TimeSkip between ''Liberation Day'' and ''Sunrider 4''. Lynn would cut herself off from the Mindstream and provide Ryuvia with access to the Prototypes' advanced technology, and in return she would be granted amnesty and protection from those who would see her dead. |
| 786 | * PolarOppositeTwins: Unlike NiceGirl Chigara, she's harsh, [[ManipulativeBastard manipulative]], and a little [[{{Yandere}} unhinged]]. |
| 787 | * PromotedToPlayable: She becomes a playable Ryder pilot in ''Sunrider 4'', [[spoiler:taking Chigara's place on the roster]]. |
| 788 | * TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: She rips into Kayto after the mission to Crow Harbor's lair goes south, accusing him of being a screwup and a glory hound who's recklessly endangering the lives of his crew not out of altruism but out of a desire to prove to the galaxy that he's some bigshot hero when he's really anything but. This vicious tirade leaves Kayto in StunnedSilence, and when Ava asks if she should throw Lynn in the brig for this insubordination, all he can do is give Lynn a pass since she's hopped up on painkillers for a nasty gunshot wound and excuse himself to his quarters. [[spoiler:As later events show, Lynn is completely right.]] |
| 789 | * ReducedManaCost: Lynn's Budding Loyalty perk gives her a chance to use her abilities for half their normal Energy cost while she's close to the Maray. |
| 790 | * ReplacementGoldfish: She expresses discomfort at the idea of being viewed this way in comparison to Chigara, especially by Kayto. |
| 791 | * RogueDrone: By ''The Captain's Return'', Lynn has deliberately cut herself off from the Prototypes' HiveMind. She saw the madness that was starting to take hold of the Mindstream after [[spoiler:Chigara's death]] and wanted no part of it, so she invented a Q-Jammer headband which isolates her from the Mindstream. This resulted in her developing a proper sense of self over the intervening years. |
| 792 | * SquishyWizard: The Dominator starts with no armor and the least health of your initial Ryders in ''The Captain's Return''. It makes up for its frailty by being able to cripple enemies with StatusEffects, provide area-of-effect damage or healing, and protect allies from laser weapons with its shield generators. |
| 793 | * TragicVillain: In ''Sunrider Academy'' she is a constant thorn in Kayto's side and a huge threat to his relationship with Chigara but, given how her parents treated her, a degree of resentment and misanthropy is understandable. |
| 794 | * TwinSwitch: In the ''Academy'' spinoff, Lynn makes a bet with Chigara that Kayto can only tell them apart through their IdenticalTwinIDTag. Chigara takes the bet and the two swap places, with Lynn being proven correct. However, Lynn takes advantage of the situation by [[BedTrick having sex with Kayto and then triumphantly revealing the deception afterwards]] to ruin his romance with Chigara, leaving Kayto horrified and Chigara heartbroken. |
| 795 | * TheUnfavorite: In ''Academy'' her jealousy and anger issues stem from her parents cloning her to create Chigara and then neglecting her. |
| 796 | * VillainousRescue: She saves Kayto at the end of ''Liberation Day'' by dragging him to an escape pod before the Sunrider rams the Machiavelli Actual. |
| 797 | * VillainsNeverLie: Everything she says about Chigara being a Prototype is ultimately proven true, but Ava and Asaga still took everything that came out of Lynn’s mouth at face value. |
| 798 | * WalkingSpoiler: Being Chigara’s ”sister”, her existence spoils Chigara’s [[HoneyTrap true nature]]. |
| 799 | * {{Yandere}}: Exhibits this towards Kayto in ''Academy''. She doesn’t kill anyone, but is disturbingly intent on stealing him away from Chigara. |
| 800 | * YouAreNumber6: Prototype [=L7NN=]. Kayto ends up giving her the name "Lynn" during his first interrogation of her because it’s less of a mouthful. |
| 801 | [[/folder]] |
| 802 | |
| 803 | [[folder:Alpha Prototype]] |
| 804 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/7cf7b543_6f7b_479a_9d40_0dcc685a97ca.png]] |
| 805 | |
| 806 | The speaker for the Prototypes. When Alpha was created, she spontaneously generated a HiveMind, which resulted in the Prototypes rebelling against their creators and causing the Diode Catastrophe. She now is the center of the Prototypes, watching the hidden factories that produce hundreds of the clones. |
| 807 | ---- |
| 808 | * BigBadDuumvirate: Her machinations form the crux of the series' plot, but she leaves the heavy lifting to Alice and Claude. Unfortunately, [[DragonWithAnAgenda neither of them really share her goals]]. |
| 809 | * CapturedSuperEntity: [[spoiler:The secret ending of ''Sunrider 4'' shows that she's being held captive in a hidden PACT facility.]] |
| 810 | * DidntSeeThatComing: She failed to realize how all-consuming her sister's hatred of humanity was, causing her plans to fall apart. |
| 811 | * ElegantGothicLolita: Claude even asks her to see Shields herself as "the Sunrider needs more lolitas." |
| 812 | * EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: She clearly cares for her "sister" Alice and is concerned for her well-being, though this blinds her to Alice's [[OmnicidalManiac true goals]]. |
| 813 | * HiveQueen: She is the originator of the Prototypes' HiveMind and directs their actions in accordance with her plans. |
| 814 | * ManBehindTheMan[=/=]ShadowDictator: She’s this to Arcadius/Alice and Claude, [[DragonWithAnAgenda or tries to be]]. Her endgame goal is to become this by uniting all of humanity under Kayto's rule, whom she will then control through the love of his life, Chigara. |
| 815 | * NiceJobBreakingItHero: So you entrusted TheDragon to carry out your will of uniting humanity. Well she had other ideas and it has cost you your people's reputation and dreams completely. |
| 816 | * NonActionBigBad: Alpha never gets directly involved in the fighting, instead letting Alice and her Prototype proxies fight on her behalf, and Claude manipulate the ''Sunrider'' crew [[TheMole on the inside]]. |
| 817 | * WalkingSpoiler: Her existence spoils the existence of the Prototypes. |
| 818 | * WellIntentionedExtremist: Her desire to control humanity is so the Prototypes can save them from a certain doom. Said doom is the corruption of the HiveMind (by Alice, though she didn’t know at the time) and [[GreaterScopeVillain Crow Harbor’s incoming Ebon Fleet]]. |
| 819 | * WhatIsThisThingYouCallLove: She doesn't seem to understand the emotion, and fears that the intense love felt by Alice and Chigara will corrupt the Prototypes' mindstream. Ironically, she clearly seems to care for Alice on some level. |
| 820 | |
| 821 | [[/folder]] |
| 822 | |
| 823 | [[folder:Omega]] |
| 824 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sunrider_4_omega_mug2.png]] |
| 825 | %% [[caption-width-right:350:some caption text]] |
| 826 | The new ruler of the Prototypes. A gestalt entity born from the fusion of Chigara and Alice's minds, Omega desires only to serve Kayto, whether he wants that or not. |
| 827 | ---- |
| 828 | * BladeBelowTheShoulder: Her arms are the limbs of a giant insect, each ending in a single large claw instead of a hand. Kayto exploits this fact by grabbing one of the claws and pressing it against his throat, threatening to commit suicide unless Omega lets him go. |
| 829 | * FanDisservice: She doesn't wear clothes and her breasts are fully visible, but any titillating factor is mitigated by the fact that she's a horrifying insect monster. Kayto himself is clearly horrified to look upon her when they first meet. |
| 830 | * HiveQueen: She has taken Alpha's place as the controller and director of the Mindstream. |
| 831 | * IWantThemAlive: She allows "the aberrant" to take some Ryders and chase down a fleeing Kayto with malicious intent, but warns her that Kayto is not to be harmed. |
| 832 | * KnowWhenToFoldEm: Once Kayto turns the World Fountain into a star, she recognizes that the battle is a lost cause and orders a withdrawal. |
| 833 | * LargeAndInCharge: Unlike Alpha, who was distinguished from the rank-and-file Prototypes by her fashion sense, Omega is physically larger and more monstrous than her Prototype drones. |
| 834 | * MentalFusion: She describes herself as the combination of Chigara and Alice's minds. |
| 835 | * ObviouslyEvil: She's a literal monster with HornsOfVillainy, HellishPupils and a mouth full of [[FangsAreEvil sharp teeth]], and she has the limbs of a giant spider in place of human arms or legs. A good guy, she is not. |
| 836 | * TitleDrop: Once the Prototypes have Kayto in their grasp, she declares that the moment they've been waiting for is finally upon them: the captain's return! |
| 837 | * VillainousRescue: She rocks up in her dreadnought, the Cathedral, to rescue Kayto from a PACT prison. Her intentions for him are less than altruistic. |
| 838 | * WeCanRuleTogether: She offers Kayto the chance to rule the galaxy at her side, claiming that the Prototypes' advanced technology will let him overcome all his enemies and become a power greater than Canon. Kayto is sorely tempted, but he refuses. |
| 839 | * WeHaveReserves: She's unconcerned with the losses her forces suffer during the Battle of the World Fountain, noting that she can always clone more Prototypes so long as the Cathedral itself remains intact. |
| 840 | * {{Yandere}}: She inherited Chigara's love for Kayto and Alice's love for Arcadius. Since only one of those two is still alive, this makes Kayto the primary target of Omega's affections. This obsession is also the reason why the Prototypes have degenerated into a bunch of sex-crazed lunatics. |
| 841 | [[/folder]] |
| 842 | |
| 843 | [[folder:The Aberrant Prototype]] |
| 844 | !![[MyNameIsQuestionMarks Chigara?]] |
| 845 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sunrider_4_fake_chigara_mug2.png]] |
| 846 | %% [[caption-width-right:350:some caption text]] |
| 847 | |
| 848 | One of Omega's Prototype minions, and the only one which seems to have a degree of independent thought. While the current crop of Prototypes all look and act like Chigara, this one behaves as if she ''is'' the original Chigara--if Chigara were a sadistic, bloodthirsty {{Yandere}}. |
| 849 | ---- |
| 850 | * AceCustom: She pilots the Widow, a souped-up Prototype Ryder with a powerful kinetic weapon, bladed attack drones, and nanomachines for rapid battlefield repair. |
| 851 | * AntiDebuff: In the final boss fight, the Widow automatically cures itself of all status effects at the start of her side's phase. |
| 852 | * AutoRevive: She has a unique Order in the final boss fight, "Nanomachines, Bitch", which revives the Widow each time it drops to 0 hit points. This forces you to deplete her health bar three times in the final battle. |
| 853 | * DarkIsEvil: She wears a black plugsuit, pilots a black-and-grey Ryder, and is a psychopathic {{Yandere}} who'll stop at nothing to have Kayto Shields for herself. |
| 854 | * DuelBoss: She squares off against Asaga in a one-on-one duel. |
| 855 | * ExplainingYourPowersToTheEnemy: She taunts Asaga by revealing that her Ryder has a self-repairing nanomachine hull, letting it undo whatever damage Asaga can inflict. |
| 856 | * HealingFactor: The nanomachines in the Widow's hull quickly repair any damage that it takes, mechanically represented by it regaining a large chunk of health at the start of its phase. |
| 857 | * HurlItIntoTheSun: She meets her end when Asaga slashes through the Widow, sending it straight into the newborn star that was the White Fountain. |
| 858 | * MasterOfTheLevitatingBlades: The Widow's "melee" attack consists of deploying swordlike attack drones which swarm around its target to slash it repeatedly. |
| 859 | * MyNameIsQuestionMarks: The text boxes always list her name as "Chigara?". |
| 860 | * MyRulesAreNotYourRules: A mild example. She’s the only unit in ''Sunrider 4'' who doesn't move through her target's space while making a melee attack, meaning Asaga can't simply turn around to shoot her in the back afterward. |
| 861 | * PostFinalBoss: She's the last enemy you face in ''Sunrider 4'' before the credits roll. While by no means a pushover, since she does possess powerful attacks and needs to be killed three times, she's still easier to deal with than the lengthy, multi-stage battle with Kuushana that preceded her. |
| 862 | * VillainousRescue: When the Prototypes come to rescue Kayto from a PACT prison, it's "Chigara?" who personally smashes through the wall of his cell and spirits him to safety. |
| 863 | * {{Yandere}}: She won't let Kayto escape her grasp, even when he's trying to flee the imminent birth of a new star which would kill them all. |
| 864 | [[/folder]] |
| 865 | |
| 866 | !!''SPOILER CHARACTERS'' |
| 867 | |
| 868 | [[folder:'''Spoiler Character''']] |
| 869 | !!Crow Harbor |
| 870 | [[quoteright:226:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/512f0b57_2984_4fdb_b1e6_f5b46788d950.jpeg]] |
| 871 | |
| 872 | Sola's uncle, who lead a civil war within the Holy Ryuvian Empire. He's also the commander of the Ebon Fleet and tried using a time device to send his forces before the battle that would result in their destruction. Now that they're sent forward in time and their time device destroyed, he decides rebuild the Holy Ryuvian Empire in the present day. |
| 873 | ---- |
| 874 | * AchillesHeel: He and his soldiers don't have any kinetic weaponry, making him almost totally helpless against a fully-powered shield. |
| 875 | * AnimalMotifs: [[AnimalThemeNaming His name is Crow]] and he wears a large bird skull on his left shoulder. Do the math. |
| 876 | * BastardBastard: He was the bastard son of the Ryuvian Emperor, is believed to have killed his father and one of his brothers in a bid for the throne[[note]]though that may have been someone else's doing and he just got blamed for it[[/note]], and he definitely plunged the galaxy into a civil war in order to grab the throne. |
| 877 | * BlackEyesOfCrazy: Whatever he's done to augment himself has turned his sclerae black by the time Kayto’s crew finally meets him. And by that point, he is completely out of his gourd. |
| 878 | * TheCameo: He appears in the intro to ''Academy'' [[CurbStompBattle curb-stomping]] Kayto. Good thing it’s just a [[ShowWithinAShow hologame]] Kayto was playing. |
| 879 | * CombatTentacles: He's sporting a set of eight Doctor Octopus-like mechanical tentacles by the time he finally appears in ''Sunrider 4''. |
| 880 | * TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: He can't be killed until he's the last enemy unit remaining - until then, you can damage him, but he will continue blasting your fleet apart at 0 hit points. |
| 881 | * ContractualBossImmunity: Completely immune to all status effects - a rarity for this game. |
| 882 | * ConquerorFromTheFuture: [[InvertedTrope Inverted]]. He's a conqueror from the technologically-advanced past. |
| 883 | * DiscOneFinalBoss: ''Sunrider 4'' spends the whole game building up to the confrontation with Crow Harbor, which has all the trappings of previous Sunrider final boss fights. Then Fontana blows him to smithereens, and you learn that there are still three chapters left to go before the game is over. |
| 884 | * TheEvilPrince: As stated above, he is believed to have killed his father and brother (though he may not have actually done this) and he plunged the galaxy into civil war in a bid for the throne. |
| 885 | * EvilUncle: To Sola, as they were on opposite sides of a civil war and she was leading her father’s armies against him. |
| 886 | * FantasticRacism: He previously waged his civil war to eliminate the "low bloods" from the Ryuvian bloodline, Sola included. |
| 887 | * {{Foreshadowing}}: He was mentioned several times as being the one to lead the Fallen, rebel forces who tried to seize the throne. |
| 888 | * GreaterScopeVillain: Not only does his Ebon Fleet presumably outclass everyone else in the setting by several orders of magnitude, but him just ''being here'' at this point in the timeline threatens to create a RealityBreakingParadox. He’s even the reason for the BigBadDuumvirate’s scheme; his actions indirectly led to the event that would cause [[OmnicidalManiac Alice’s]] hatred of humanity, [[HiveQueen Alpha’s]] entire plot to unite humanity behind Kayto and rule them from the shadows was meant to give them a chance of winning in the fight against the Ebon Fleet, and [[JerkassGods Claude]] was working with the Prototypes because she thought they had the best chance of helping her resolve the paradox of Crow’s presence. |
| 889 | * NoSell: His dreadnought has maxed-out shields which cannot be shut off due to his ContractualBossImmunity, making him completely impervious to laser and pulse weapons. |
| 890 | * ObviouslyEvil: Just in case the raven feather cape and the giant bird skull weren't enough of an indication that he's a bad guy, Crow Harbor gets a visual redesign in ''Sunrider 4'' that makes him more monstrous. He has BlackEyesOfCrazy. He has fangs. His right arm and the right side of his face are clunky cybernetic prosthetics, while his left arm and the left side of his face appear to have no skin. He even has a set of mechanical tentacles ending in bladed pincers. |
| 891 | * OhCrap: He's visibly alarmed when Kayto threatens to inject himself with the nanomachine serum, suggesting that Kayto could indeed turn things around and pull off a win if he did so. |
| 892 | * OutsideContextProblem: While present-day humans have encountered ancient Ryuvian weapons, they're all only old and defective due to lack of maintenance. No one expects an entire battle fleet to appear with fully operational equipment from 2,000 years ago. |
| 893 | * TimeTravel: Used a time device to go back to the beginning of a battle and alter it into his favor. However, his device got sabotaged and his fleet flung thousands of years into the future. Unable to return to his own time, he decides to rebuild the Holy Ryuvian Empire by conquering the galaxy once more. |
| 894 | * WorfHadTheFlu: Crow's entire faction is nowhere near full strength by the time Kayto's crew finally encounters him. His ships may be more advanced than anything else in the setting, but they're also heavily damaged from their battle with the Sharr'Lac, and the infrastructure needed to repair and refuel them simply doesn't exist in the modern galaxy. Most of his men are likewise either dead or juiced up on PsychoSerum, leaving him with only a handful of crazed ryder pilots for backup. He still gives the crew the fight of their lives despite this, but it's a fight they can potentially win instead of a curbstomp in his favor. |
| 895 | * YouHaveNoChanceToSurvive: Once the battle swings in his favor, Crow taunts Kayto by telling him that his women are doomed and his ship is lost. He invites Kayto to listen to the girls' screams of terror as their Ryders get shot to pieces, calling it "[t]he sounds of their deaths. The sounds of your failure". |
| 896 | [[/folder]] |
| 897 |
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