Fridge / Arcaea

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Fridge Brilliance

• The characters having outfits and appearances that made no sense in reality (such as Saya's right eye being replaced by a flower) makes more sense when you consider they're all just recreated copies of dead people made to resemble the original as much as Arcaea could do.
• The charts in Arcaea are not made randomly. The notes sometimes have references to the songs' lyrics, such as plot point-like Arcs and a sine wave-shaped Arc in "world.execute(me);." This seems to be supported by how one of the charters, Nitro, occasionally explains on Twitter why they built charts a certain way.
• Vita's home planet was destroyed in an inter-galactic war and moved to a supposedly "neutral" planet that was later revealed to be behind her home planet's destruction and aligned to the Imperium. This planet also has children awakening special talents from the age of 10, is mostly consisted of Weak, but Skilled people, and has entertainment like audio drama, concerts and comic books. It's most likely a dystopian version of Earth.
• Given the way Hikari and Tairitsu are dressed and the central game's plot, it is easy to think the conflict is light versus dark. Yet the darkness in this game is called "conflict." In the world of Arcaea, there is Endless Daytime. That means there is no such thing as darkness — just light versus conflict.
• Tairitsu is associated with towers. In the story, she wakes up inside a ruined tower and eventually collapses one in Vicious Labyrinth. In Tarot readings, The Tower represents future disaster and tragedy, very much like what happens towards the end of the story.
• One of the possible unlocks in the Axiom of the End is a song named "World Ender" with the Japanese title "魔王" (Japanese for "Demon King"). Despite its macabre namesake, it is a Light Side song and not a Conflict side, with Fracture Hikari on the album cover. The Japanese title refers to the upcoming tragedy driven by Hikari's self-preservation instincts, and the English title refers to Hikari destroying Arcaea to revive Tairitsu.
• Some of the partners' skills relate to their character in a way:
  • Alice and Tenniel's skill involves mirroring the chart and showing FAR notes as PURE notes. The sequel to Alice in Wonderland is called Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) — the word "looking glass" being another word for mirror. In Alice's story, she also glimpses inside a literal piece of glass and finds an Awful Truth about herself.
  • Somewhat helped by it being an Ascended Meme, Ayu's story shows that she can eat the Arcaea glass shards. The glass shards can be described as fragments, which is the name for one of the in-game currency. Ayu's skill sometimes rewards negative fragments, meaning she ate them.
  • Hikari's skills are largely known for being easy gauge functions used to assist newer players. They don't count as a clear but for story purposes they do count towards an unlock. This might represent how unlike most characters, she doesn't question why she's in Arcaea at all and only seeks to bask in the joy of viewing the memories of positive Arcaea shards.
    • In the other hand, Hikari's Zero variant contains a "Danger" gauge that instantly empties the recollection rate on losing one note, and her initially high stats decrease all the way to 0 for each level up. She nearly goes catatonic because of positive Arcaea overdose, only breaking out after she wishes upon an anomaly shard.
    • Her Fracture form has a gauge that starts off as Easy before switching to Hard upon full recollection. This represents her changing demeanor towards Tairitsu. In the main storyline, she initially tries to befriend the latter and refuses to fight her. When she realizes that her life is on the line, she stops playing nice and starts to fight back.
    • Hikari's Fatalis form has the unique drawback of locking the player out from World Mode after a play and doubles the stamina cost in exchange for her abnormally high STEP. Her special recollection gauge also gives less and less room for error as the song goes until it can cause a Track Lost after several misses. The former represents how her existence heralds the destruction of Arcaea or at least irreversibly change it, and the latter represents her ruthlessness when being increasingly pushed into a corner. Her high-risk, high-return nature as a partner, in addition to being able of increasing her stats beyond usual parameters also mirrors Tempest Tairitsu (see below), symbolizing how she became no different from the unhinged Tairitsu by killing her, at least in her viewpoint.
  • Lagrange's skill shows players their projected score for a song, which is predicting the future in way. In her story, she makes many accurate predictions about what is to come in the main storyline.
  • Tairitsu and her variants are known for their incredible Step stat, which is helpful for grinding in World Mode. This could represent her determination to achieve her goals in the main storyline.
    • Special mentions to her Tempest form, who has a special hard gauge that can instantly cause a Track Lost after a few lost notes in exchange for an abnormally high STEP stat. Fitting for this form who goes to sadistic lengths trying to kill Hikari. Her stats can also increase further from her base maximum by leveling up other partners, just like how she achieved this form after being basked with the knowledge of Arcaea and its denizens.
• The song difficulties being referred to as Past, Present, Future, or Beyond make sense:
  • Past: The past is often the easiest point in time to reflect on and think about, thus it's fitting that the easiest difficulty be called that.
  • Present: The present is the middle of the road and refers to the current point of time, making it normal mode.
  • Future: The future has not happened yet and thus, it is difficult to tell what is to come. This makes it a hard difficulty.
  • Beyond: The beyond is a point in time that is unpredictable or not possible at all, which makes sense for it to be some songs' Harder Than Hard difficulty.
• While some players criticize the singer's accent in "Testify" as Narm, if one thinks about it, it makes somewhat sense story-wise. The speaker can be assumed to be Hikari, who was pushed into losing her mind courtesy of Tairitsu's unrelenting assault, the odd pronunciation could be chalked up to her losing her sanity.

Fridge Horror

• The setting of Arcaea explains why collaborations and crossovers make sense, as the world pulls in characters from different realms. This is however, soured by The Reveal that every single character that ended up in Arcaea was dead. It puts a Harsher in Hindsight note on every partner unique to a collaboration event, most notably characters from CHUNITHM or Doro*C; Are these all replicas of dead people too??
• In a display of dark humor, Alice & Tenniel and Vita get affinity bonuses in "Overdead."'s world map. Those two are the only characters (bar Tairitsu) with a confirmed reason of death. They're pretty much over and dead.
• More of a fridge Tear Jerker, but in the first ending, the real Tairitsu managed to attain the happiness she desires when the copy Hikari revives her in the copy Tairitsu's body. She's been given a proper conclusion despite all she had gone through and done. But the real Hikari? After she got barred out from Arcaea, she was never heard of again. No matter the ending, at the very end, the real Hikari is never given salvation and remains as miserable as she was.
• Hikari's ability to subconsciously make everything she wishes into reality isn't limited to the copy Hikari. It's also present in the real one. And in the secret ending it's revealed that the real Hikari created Arcaea as a subterfuge because she suffered from depression for reasons vaguely described as issues with her parents. Which brings to the question that did she delete her parents from existence on accident?
• There are no males in the realm of Arcaea. There is Tenniel, but The Reveal in Alice's story showed that he was only an illusion. Does Hikari happen to be a misandrist?
• Nami believes that she was in a dream when she gets sent to Arcaea and she intends to stay there forever because Arcaea was a pretty little paradise for her. Aside that from what we know, it isn't and she's dead. It's likely that she died in her sleep for any reason imaginable and doesn't know anything about it. Makes a really tragic thought to even think of.