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Azure Striker Gunvolt
- Seeing Joule tied within a machine by Sumeragi is wrong enough at first glance, but as it turns out she wasn't even captured for the sake of. She's an Artificial Human created by Sumeragi specifically to track out any troublesome Adepts and eventually ensuring they could not wreck havoc. That's right. Sumeragi's newest Adept pacification tool is a girl with agency and sapience. None of the Sumeragi elites, including the more noble ones had anything opposing this because they believe it was for the greater good. They might had been believing that they were doing the right thing (and they might as well as be), but damn.
- Asimov shooting Gunvolt and then Joule. She at least reincarnates with her powers and then merges with GV to save him, but he's still grieving over the whole thing, and the fact that Joule doesn't physically exist anymore. And that's the true ending - in the bad one both of them simply die.
- Elise. First of all she was regularly bullied at school causing her to play video games as a form of escapism. Then she was captured by Merak and was forced to have two seperate personalities implanted in her, one of them being insane with the third one taking absolute control over her and forced her to turn the entire staff of the facility into zombies. Then she loses her memories and is seemingly saved by Gunvolt... until she remembers everything and her dominant personality forces her to attack and fight Gunvolt which leads to him killing her only for her dominant personality to release the insane one in an attempt to survive. If that Trauma Conga Line didn't convince you, what she says when she encounters Gunvolt again is not apologizing for her attacking or trying to kill him (she did that in their first encounter) but:
- To be fair, Elise already had DID before she was captured and experimented on. In the Lazy Kingdom Sound Drama CD we find out that the crazed personality was already a part of her, and came out while she was playing MMORPGs, abusing her powers to be a ruthless player killer. When she was experimented on, that personality came out and butchered the staff, which forced them to create a third personality, the dominant one, which would hopefully be loyal and cooperative. And all of that happened because Merak dumped Elise at a black site instead of handing her over to Nova. Those experiments? They weren't approved. If Merak hadn't been too lazy to file a report, Nova would have found out about Elise's existence and given her the same life of luxury all the other Sumeragi officers (sans Stratos) enjoy. Her life really is awful Note .
- What happened to Stratos is just plain wrong and depressing - kidnapped out of his own home, driven insane, experimented on... we can only guess how horrible it was, given that he's a mindless devouring machine by the time Gunvolt meets him. It went so bad that even Nova of all people was disgusted by what happened to him.
- Nothing goes right for Gunvolt. Nothing. He was once an orphan who was captured by Sumeragi for experiments and (surprisingly) it went perfectly for him, then he was saved by Asimov who he considered a mentor. All seems well enough for him since it seemed like he got some genuine comrades who were willing to protect him in need and even spend their spare time with him in-between missions (as depicted in QUILL's voice drama). Unfortunately, after he took out Nova, it turns out his mentor was a genocidal madman who plans to create an utopia for Adepts and seeks to have him and Joule join him as his King and Queen. Spoilers for Luminous Avenger iX Needless to say, Gunvolt is dissatisfied of this and Asimov kills him and Joule. Assuming if he did equip the Handmade Necklace before meeting him, he survives and enters a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to avenge Joule, fatally wounding Asimov and incurring his former group's wrath. In the end, not only Joule no longer exists in physical form and he was left in a funk for some time, the only thing he managed to achieve after the first game is taking down many of those who could defend the country from rampaging adepts, and thus unintentionally giving Eden the perfect conditions to start their attack.
Azure Striker Gunvolt 2
History Repeats, indeed.
- Zonda's machinations have Joule and Mytyl merge into... a new being that's not exactly either of them. Both GV and Copen lost someone dearest at that moment, but while GV at least have Quinn and Xiao, Copen now has to live with the fact that his sister is (or becomes) an Adept - the "abominations" that he has sworn to hunt and kill.
- The worst thing is that he could had been a bit more well-prepared (and potentially could be convinced to stop his Adept-hunting) if Copen's father would be a lot more open to him on what he did to Mytyl instead of just keeping it silent. As it turns out, he was the person who extracted the Muse from her because it's taking her life away and he had to take the thing out so she could live.
- The Joule Chats. Most of them now deal more with the factor of Quinn taking up the place in Gunvolt's life where Joule once was in. Even though Gunvolt still cares deeply about Joule, Joule worries that she may be getting replaced by Quinn, even up to the point where Quinn is better at certain things that Joule wasn't exactly good at. It even gets up to the point where most of the moments end up with "Joule feels nervous" as opposed to "You feel a little closer to Joule". Perhaps a bit of WMG, but perhaps the reasoning why Joule still has a higher chance of doing "Anthem" if you die is probably her trying to prove she's still useful even if she can't do much physically anymore.
- The Mytyl Chats also count. For the most part, what we know of her is that she's an extremely frail ill girl who has only gotten worse the longer she's lived. Even though the shards of Joule's power seem to help her feel better, we see in most of the scenes that she's gloomy or crying over seeing scenes of a life she'll never live or have, wanting to rush growing up because she feels she'll never reach adulthood, and feeling like she's holding Copen back and wants him to be happy even if she can't. Copen even notes that Mytyl brings up the latter bits countless times. Like with how "Joule feels nervous", the lines of "You feel a little closer to Mytyl" is sad in the sense that you're spending time with someone who may not have much time left.
- The Eden soldiers desperately trying and failing to stop Gunvolt and Copen. They're throwing themselves by the dozens against the protagonists in a final effort to stop them from reaching Zonda, and it gets to the point that even Copen wonders why the hell they're doing this if they can't win. Simple: they know they don't stand a chance, it's just that they can do nothing but hope they can weaken them enough that Zonda and what's left of the Grimoire Seven can take them down. What's worse is that GV practically begs them to get out of the way and not throw their lives away and seems close to breaking down; while Copen just coldly brushes it off in disbelief that these Adepts would throw away their lives for nothing.
- Put yourself in Tenjian (and Zonda's) shoes for a moment. You and your adoptive sister were orphans with nowhere left to hide or live because the owner of the orphanage you're in died. And then people know that both of you were Adepts who were gleefully hunted for sport in the country you are in. People rejected you and treated you like some sort of horrible beast until a man came in, acted kindly and gave you two food...aside that man was a member of an anti-Adept group and he poisoned the food, causing you to almost die and your adoptive sister having to watch. Too bad for them, you two won the Superpower Lottery big time, and the experience filled both of you with hate. Now any wonder Tenjian and Zonda would have been spearheading a mass killing spree the first chance they got to?
Azure Striker Gunvolt 3
- In a conversation, Gunvolt reveals he spent years happy with Quinn for the ordinary days she gave him when his Primal Dragon powers went out of control. BB assumes that she was his girlfriend, and while he doesn't deny it he does reveal that what happened to her was what drove him to Sumeragi, who he hated.Gunvolt: ...Those days are long gone. After I became a Primal Dragon, I hurt her once by accident. I decided then and there to leave her side for good.
- Gunvolt and Kirin have a discussion on his age, where its revealed that even he doesn't know how old he is since he stopped aging due to either Anthem or the AB Spirits and being sealed behind an "old-style" Glaive left his memories scrambled of the duration.
- Until the true ending got updated to provide very crucial context on Gunvolt's fate, there's the fact that there was no happy ending for Gunvolt in this game. He either kills himself to stop Moebius from seemingly using his power to destroy the world as he foresaw in a vision, or he flies off to parts unknown with no hint as to whether he's coming back, still fearful of what he becomes. If the former happens, Kirin breaks because until then she had been actively trying not to kill anyone and they had gotten close as partners.
