Fridge / Fuga: Melodies of Steel

Spoilers Off for Fridge pages. You Have Been Warned.

Regarding this game and the rest of the Fuga series

Fridge Brilliance

• The game's muted color palette is done to play up the Darker and Edgier aspect of the game and the point across that it's inspired by World War I/II aesthetics, but this factoid also reveals that Caninu and Felineko have red-green color blindness and see the world in a sepia-like tone. We may be seeing the world closer to how the average Caninu or Felineko sees it, albeit not exactly.^note One may also view Solatorobo: Red the Hunter's more colorful palette in retrospect as being the result of Red's Half-Human Hybrid biology allowing him to process a wider range of hues, though this fails to take Tail Concerto's own colorful look into account.

• The implementation of the Soul Cannon is a massive stroke of genius. It shows the aftermath of the Heroic Sacrifice trope and how it affects the remaining survivors. In the short term, it gives you victory. In the long term, you made it harder for everyone else. The children have to deal with grief and the loss of their friend, while the players lose a character to interact with, which weakens the Taranis as a whole. This drives you to play as professionally as possible to avoid using it, treating the children like actual living beings— not unlike an actual commander on the battlefield having to make the best decisions possible. Since the Soul Cannon only unseals at 50% health and lower during boss battles, the game is effectively calling you out for being a bad player that landed them in this mess.

• Why isn't there an in-story repeat of the Hopeless Boss Fight if you decide to (for whatever reason) use the Soul Cannon on Pretzel again? Because then, the Radio Woman will immediately clarify what happened rather than leaving the kids to slowly figure it out for themselves, either giving them more time to compose themselves before the Berman garrison from last time shows up, or jolting them into taking the war more seriously despite their grief. The next chapter's brief dialogue (where they mistake the Girl of Light for their lost friend's ghost) indicates that one of these may be the case.

• Malt’s insistence on being the leader since he is the oldest of the kids actually holds some weight if you consider the leader to be the protagonist of the game. In the first game, Malt is actually the second (third if you count Jihl who doesn’t really do anything for the first game) oldest person of the Taranis crew, with the oldest being the AI Jeanne. Malt can be sacrificed to the Soul Cannon like any other child, but Jeanne is the one who is actually running simulations (playthroughs) until she can reach the best possible outcome (ending), effectively making her the avatar for the player. In the second game, with Jeanne dead, Jihl never on the same tank as the main party during the game, and Stollen and Baum being little more than the children’s prisoners, Malt becomes the oldest hero. With this, Malt cannot permanently die (protagonist Plot Armor) and has the ability to travel through time possibly thanks to Maestro (saving and loading), effectively taking Jeanne’s place. In other words, the oldest member of the Taranis crew is always the leader of the kids and the protagonist of the game.

• The children of the Taranis follow an Edible Theme Naming scheme where their last names are related to desserts. The adults of Gasco have surnames related to wine. Kids get addicted to sweet foods, and adults get addicted to alcohol. Regarding some individual names:
  • Malt and Mei Marzipan and Hanna Fondant are closer to each other than any other kids on the Taranis. Marizpan and fondant are pastes used for similar purposes in confectionery, such as in cake decorating. Marzipan is made from almond meal and has a more rigid and nutty flavor attached to it, while fondant is made from powdered sugar and corn syrup, and has a more simple and sweet favor. Malt is the stalwart Team Dad of the crew defined by his sense of responsibility, and Hanna is the compassionate Team Mom of the crew defined by her caring for everyone as individuals. Marzipan also has a cream-like color while plain fondant is usually white, which reflects Malt and Hanna's main fur colors.
  • Boron Brioche requires little explanation. A brioche is a warm, rich bread with a puffy appearance, and Boron is a Gentle Giant with a warm personality.
  • Jury's out on whether the devs have picked up on this, but Socks' last name of "Million" can be thought of as following the Edible Theme Naming scheme when you consider the existence of millionaire's shortbread (called sablé du millionnaire in French), a dessert composed of a biscuit base covered with caramel and chocolate.
  • Jin Macchiato is different from the other kids as his surname comes from a dessert coffee as opposed to a dessert food. Aside from how a macchiato would match Jin's brown fur color, Jin himself is more mature than the others and fancies himself an engineer… but more importantly, he's shown to be a workaholic married to the craft. What's the universal method that all workaholics use to keep working?
  • Britz's surname manages to fit within both the kids' and the Berman theme naming: a strudel is both a dessert food and a dish that originated from the days of the Austrian Empire.
    • His father's first name is Spritz, the name for a cocktail typically composed of white wine (such as Prosecco), digestive bitters and soda water. Merlot and Muscat, the two Gasco Army officers we see, are themselves named after varieties of wine and the grapes they come from. It's a nod to how he betrayed the Berman Empire and relayed their invasion plans to Gasco, allowing them to defend Paresia in advance.

• It makes perfect sense for the dormitory of the Taranis to be right next to the control room. If an attack were to begin while the kids were asleep, they'd have to get out of bed and to their fighting stations quickly. The inverse is also true for any kids who would be injured or knocked out in battle, allowing them to recover quickly due to the short distance back to the dormitory.

• Yoann's explanation of what it really means aside, let's discuss how each line from the Legend of the Lost God may have been (mis)interpreted by the Berman people, especially since it can be argued to be a sort of justification of the Berman Empire's fascist ideology:
  • "Once upon a time, God bestowed power upon our people and everyone lived in happiness." — References a paradise lost of sorts from ancient times, and one the Berman people long to return to.
  • "However, there came some evil beings who claimed God's power as their own, and with it, they created a Devil." — As possibly alluded to by Flam Kish, the ancestors to the Berman people were "chosen" to have the Lost God's power, and when someone unworthy stole it from them, all they brought was ruination in the form of a "Devil". The lesson to take would be that the Berman people are special because such a power can only belong to them and them alone. While it's never specified who these "evil beings" are from the perspective of the Berman people, it's easy to surmise that they viewed everyone aside from them as worthy of being under such a label.
  • "Distraught, God battled with the Devil and delivered His punishment; however, having lost His heart, He fell fast asleep deep beneath the land." — The Lost God was saddened by those "evil beings" who hurt him and the ancestors to the Berman people, and fought against their injustice. He may have lost his "heart" in the figurative sense rather than a literal one, being so distraught that he took away all his power, with the ancestors to the Berman people being left to suffer for the actions of those who perverted the Lost God's love.
  • "With His last breath, He proclaimed that when men had forgotten their transgressions and remembered how to live in happiness, He would return to this land once more." — Hence, the only way to regain the power of the Lost God is to conquer other nations and unify them under the ideals of the Berman Empire. Then, everyone can once again "live in happiness" together, there will be no "evil beings" left to pervert that happiness or steal it away, and the Lost God can finally return and reward his "chosen people" with a new paradise. In short, the Berman people have the God-given right to do whatever it takes to regain the power and prosperity that was once pilfered from them.

• Germany's reasons for dispatching the Vanargand to attack France are put into a new light when Solatorobo: Red the Hunter's art books are taken into consideration: the Arts Class Juno that France held was originally copied from the Ace Class Juno that Germany held. It wasn't just France's secrecy surrounding the Soul Cannon that compelled them to attack— from Germany's perspective, they were retaliating against France's abuse of their friendship as nations through using the Juno that Germany shared with them to build secret weapons of mass destruction. Jeanne's story about "evil beings who claimed God's power as their own" doesn't refer to France reverse-engineering Juno in general, it directly refers to how the very Juno that France reverse-engineered was originally copied from the Juno that Germany had— the very same one that produced the "Lost God" Vanargand.

• Hax was fascinated by the legend of the Vanargand since he was a child. The Vanargand looks like a six-legged sauropod dinosaur. Kids Love Dinosaurs.

• The devs in Japanese articles or media specifically refer to Fuga as a "dramatic simulation RPG" ("ドラマティックシミュレーションRPG"), rather than as something more typical like a "tactical" or "strategy" RPG. It's justified, however— the events of the game aside from the Golden Ending timeline are indeed literal dramatic simulations by Jeanne.

Fridge Horror

• After you fire the Soul Cannon, you don't know what happens exactly to whoever is inside the chamber. You know they die, but the corpse? Does it end up disintegrated or... will it need to be pulled out from there every time? Can you imagine the kids also having to deal with the lifeless bodies of their friends who, just a short time ago, were alive and well? According to the tutorial, the radio says that the user has "faded away". This implies that their body is completely disintegrated.
  • Now at the level of Ascended Fridge Horror, if the Famitsu manga's interpretation of how the Soul Cannon works can be taken as canon: the person inside the chamber is brutally impaled by a bunch of wires that seem to drain out any bio-energy, while the chamber itself is heated to temperatures hot enough to eviscerate skin and bone. So yes, it's shown that their body is completely disintegrated, and not even in a quick or painless manner. Or a clean one, as shown by how the now-empty chamber is smothered with blood. Now imagine this happening to the younger children like Hack, Chick and Mei whenever you sacrifice them in-game...
  • It's shown that the second game debunked this as being canon: it's unlikely that there are invasive wires needed to gut the chosen sacrifice to collect Bio-Energy, as it's been revealed that one especially powerful character was able to survive being sacrificed to the Soul Cannon repeatedly… which was still shown to be an incredibly agonizing experience for them. Additionally, when a child is sacrificed to the Soul Cannon in the second game, it's shown that they aren't dead until the countdown for it fully completes, which is when you can hear their last thoughts as they're finally converted to Bio-Energy. It's reasonable to assume that, yes, being melted into a paste by the Soul Cannon is still a painful experience, but there's no indication that it's a gory one as shown in the manga.

• Unlike the other kids, Malt's shown to have a faint memory of the timeline where he or one of his friends used the Soul Cannon to defeat Pretzel. Is this just a one-off, or does Malt experience similar faint memories of the Taranis' destruction every time you restart from a Game Over?

• A testament to Shvein Hax's ruthlessness and fanaticism: it's shown via the Berman Reports that Colonel Pretzel was left in the dark about Hax's plans to revive the Lost God, in contrast to how several other Berman officers like Blutwurst were explicitly made aware of it. Hax would clearly be aware of Pretzel's professionalism and desire to avoid unneeded bloodshed from his time serving under him as second-in-command, knowing that if Pretzel didn't object to Hax's ambitions out of finding his pursuit of a supposed fairy tale as being detached from reality, he would instead object to Hax risking the destruction of an entire country just to revive a lost deity. It can be easily surmised that Hax sent Pretzel off on the suicide mission to Petit Mona not just to cause the Taranis' reactivation, but also for the express purpose of getting rid of Pretzel to prevent him from knowing too much about his true plans.

• Hack and Chick's helmets: Hack's has an enormous hole in the side. If you read Hack's description, it states that they 'found their helmets together on the battlefield.' And you meet them in a ruined town, destroyed by the Berman... It thus seems very likely that Chick and Hack stole those helmets off dead soldiers.

• Despite Jeanne's powers to turn back time to get a better ending, it's a good thing that the Golden Ending is the canon one, given the possible consequences that would arise from certain characters dying:
  • Despite how Jeanne doesn't sacrifice her existence in the Normal Ending, a number of events from Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 could still happen: the Taranis could eventually self-repair despite being mangled after the Vanargand's explosion (given that the Tarascus did the same); nothing's stopping Cayenne from still pulling a Kill and Replace on the Gasco leadership and trying to exploit the Taranis as a weapon; and a mysterious man could likely still inform Cayenne of Jihl and the Belenos' existence and how to make use of them. The second game also establishes Malt as the leader and main protagonist of the kids, and expands upon Malt's moment of Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory following the Soul Cannon tutorial— like Jeanne, he has the power to reverse time to get a better ending, but he's also unique in that he can use his Leadership Skills to mildly alter reality. Without him, and assuming that Jeanne can't fully replace him, his friends are going to have a much harder time.
  • Socks has been heavily implied (and outright confirmed through Word of God) to be the direct ancestor to Merveille Million from Solatorobo: Red the Hunter. See the part of this page discussing connections to other Little Tail Bronx games for details, but to make a long story short, the world is going to have two less heroes around to save it.
  • If the kids fail to get through to Britz, he won't show the kids the picture of his mother and little sister, and so they won't find them in the Lhassa Apso prison camp. After Britz commits suicide out of shame and desperation, his family will probably never learn about what happened to him.

• Who knows how many people died in the Vanargand's awakening and rampage? Given the sheer disparity in land mass between Gasco◊ and the Shepherd Republic◊, there is no way it can be a low number.
  • Shepherd's map also shows that some of Gasco's locations have radically shifted their positions as a result of the Vanargand's attack. As just one example, Mau's location in Fuga is in southern Gasco, but its location in Solatorobo is in the northwest of Shepherd. Not all locations have shifted too radically as Pharaoh is still roughly in the southeast of Shepherd just like it was in Gasco, but the implication to take is that the Vanargand's rampage was so brutal that it may have led the fragments of Gasco's land to careen past each other in different directions, or at worst, careen into one another.
  • The Famitsu manga decided to ascend the Inferred Holocaust, too. This chapter shows that the Vanargand's attacks are causing the ground beneath Gasco to crumble, and silhouettes of people are shown falling into the abyss as this happens. The second game also has several NPCs reference the event as a cataclysm that led to people losing their homes and farmland.

Connections to the rest of the Little Tail Bronx universe

Fridge Brilliance

• Socks may not have a dessert-based surname like the other kids on the Taranis… but his direct descendant Red Savarin does!

• Vizsla and Shetland are the locations visited in the fourth and fifth chapters of the game, just as they were in Solatorobo: Red the Hunter.

• The Library entry for Spino Lake describes it as constantly growing in size with no evidence of stopping. It won't; flash-forward to a thousand years later, and the lake's gotten so big that Spinon is a Venice-like canal city built on top of it.

Fridge Horror

• The Berman Empire's overt and blatant Nazi Germany similarities become this when you realize that the original Nazi Germany most likely already existed in this universe. From a symbolic standpoint, it's a testament to Baion's words in Solatorobo: Red the Hunter— the Caninu and Felineko are literally falling into the same trappings that old humanity did.

• As stated above, if Socks is ever sacrificed to fire the Soul Cannon, then Merveille will never be born, the Red that we know and love will never be created, and the technology used to create the Dahak may not even exist, either. Even if Baion needed Merveille's skillset to create the pseudo-hybrids needed to summon Tartaros, there's nothing that says he couldn't eventually find another way to achieve his plans, even if it took much longer. Likewise, Merveille joined the Kurvaz to find a way to permanently destroy Lares when she learned of Bruno's desire to use it to Take Over the World, and so without her or Red around, there may be nothing to stop Bruno from carrying out his plans. Either way, Shepherd and the world at large are going to be screwed.

• It's revealed in this game that, following the Reset, France was originally raised to the sky as a single continent as opposed to the archipelago of islands seen in Solatorobo. Prairie is shown to be a bunch of islands by the time of Solatorobo despite allegedly being a post-Reset version of Belgium, so it can be questioned as to whether or not it also underwent a cataclysm like the Vanargand's attack. With any luck, the Iron Giant had something to do with it.