Video Game / Oriental Blue Ao No Tengai

Oriental Blue: Ao no Tengai is a spin-off of the Tengai Makyou series for the Game Boy Advance, set in a different alternate Japan. It still has some comedic moments, but compared to the main series, it's Darker and Edgier, with a more serious plot and characters.

Oriental Blue: Ao no Tengai contains examples of:

• Ancient Astronauts: As you find out if you bring Kashin Koshi or Kagura to the incomprehensible old wizards in one of the shrines to translate for you, the Blue Clan were actually colonists from a distant star.
• Anti-Villain: Kokuyo aka The Masked Onyx. All he wants is to save his sister Kohaku from her Sealed Evil in a Can state and he has no interest in Mahouin's plan to plunge Daito into the Makai. He even offers you the Sword of Tentei in exchange for assurance not to pursue Kohaku for her crimes. Regardless of your decision, Kohaku will attack you anyway, driving him into Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum by fulfilling the evil plan anyway and attacking you in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Arch-Enemy: Some of your party members have an antagonistic relationship with some of the villains and have some unique dialogue towards them if you include them in your party before their boss fight.
  • Shadow Ukon has a personal vendetta against Shikbu Oboro for being responsible for the death of her husband, the Original Ukon by forcing him to create the cursed blade Kagemaru in order to kill Tentei, resulting in the unfortunate blacksmith being condemned to die for the creating the blade and his wife being driven to take the cursed blade, rename herself after her husband and seek revenge against the evil spirit.
  • Professor Ren shares the same views her father has towards Wan E. Wan, a Mad Scientist who studies the The Undead and got cast out for it. She is disgusted by his experiments into creating zombies, lack of moral restraints and his delusional belief that he considers this as a "science".
  • Tenkamaru has Hyaki Chujo, who not only stole the Ogre Clan's sacred treasure ,the Ogre Horns from him, he has also killed his fellow Ogre friends.
  • Garasya is opposed to Kara, who not only launched a horde of monsters to attack his homeland, she has also brainwashed him into believing that she is his dead lover, Maya out of Mad Love.
• Axe-Crazy: Kohaku, who is considered the The Dreaded by the town of Kizan for eating young maidens in an obssessive need to retain her beauty.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: The demons that Kara ususally summons and her One-Winged Angel form in her final fight.
• Bonus Dungeon: Arahabaki on Mount Shiba and the Abyss in the Nakara Temple. The former has maze-like floors that require some puzzle solving and is filled with Boss in Mook Clothing monsters, beating it gives you Dark Lord Gedo, a Purposely Overpowered playable character. The later is filled with powerful monsters and Superbosses that can only be accessed by using the last save point inside the Colossus and waiting for the save sound during The Stinger.
• The Chosen One: The main character was prophesied by name. Apparently nobody else has ever had that name, since simply saying it is enough to convince most people of your identity. The prophecy was extremely specific; it'll even be updated to reflect whatever gender you chose for your character at the beginning.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: Garasya and Gedo. The former is a wandering bodyguard who is working to support his people at Wat Arun and can even save the hero at the very beginning of the game. The later is a Person of Mass Destruction who is quite ashamed and saddened by his role and history and is happy to not fight.
• Cyclops: Both the Blue Eyed Clan and the Red Eyed Clan(which includes the priests of Barato.) only have a single eye.
• Darker and Edgier: While some of the supporting characters are still comedic, and there are occasional humorous scenes, the overall plot, setting, and backstory of this game are far more serious than is usual for the series; the core storyline begins with a city in danger of literally falling into hell due to corruption and only gets darker from there.
• Disc-One Nuke: An Indestructible Dagger (and some other junk shop equipment) has very high stats for the early game in exchange for a high break chance; if you fully enchant one, however, its break chance drops to zero. While you eventually get better equipment (and the very late game either has better innate abilities or can be enchanted in unique ways), Indestructible Daggers enchanted with strong attack magic can easily carry you through the first part of the game, and even if you don't know the recipes for the strongest enchantments, an Indestructable Dagger is still a better weapon than you'll get for a long time.
• Dungeon Town: Daito, the capital, has monsters wandering it outside its main districts, which has a lot of people worried in-setting. And as the game progresses, it gets much worse, with its districts falling into Makai one by one until the whole place is one big Dungeon Town.
• Emotionless Girl: Princess Wakana. It's because she's actually a robot.
• Evil Sorcerer: Mahouin, the Big Bad. Also, Suigetsu, although he's Brainwashed and Crazy.
• Evil Weapon: Most of the cursed weapons, especially since they can't be removed except through a shaman. Most notable is the Kagemaru, the cursed soul-destroying blade wielded by Shadow Ukon whose curse is quite powerful, even a shaman can't remove it.
• Evolving Weapon: Shadow Ukon has an unremovable cursed blade that gets stronger as she gains levels and inflicts increasingly powerful status debuffs when activated.
• The Unfought: Mahouin and Prince Rikoudo. You only get to fight the formers's two demonic dogs while he provides magical support for them. He then ends up beingforcibly used as a Living Battery by Medicus to power up the Colossus. The later ends up being easily destroyed by the fully-restored Dharma Djinn as you and your party assault the Colossus.
• Fallen Hero: Hyaki Chujo's true identity is King Kiba. Once an honorable and legendary King of the Ogres with a friendly relationship towards humans, his death by poison at the hands of General Mouken's descendant changes him into a ruthless Tin Tyrant obsessed with power who now regards his race as worthless weaklings and doesn't hesitate to kill them if they get in his way.
• Flunky Boss: Some of the bosses fight alongside their minions during battle while the others are untargetable while providing only magic support for their minions.
• Fortune Teller: Sunayomi, who tells the future using a bed of magical sand. You can visit her for advice early on if you want, but her guidance is fairly cryptic.
• The Glasses Come Off: Professor Ren has a special portrait which has her not wearing her trademark Opaque Nerd Glasses which is only used in two occasions: After successfully fending off the Makai Castle with the Hero's help and the Blue Castle's Wave Motion Cannon and the endgame where she happily states goes to be Defiant to the End despite the seemingly hopeless odds of fighting the Colossus.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Whether you get Kashin Koshi or Kagura as a party member is decided last digits on your game clock were 00-29 or 30-59 when you talked to an otherwise-unimportant NPC in the northwest section of Daito. (If you don't talk to him at all, you get Kashin Koshi.) There is no logical connection between these things, and the impact isn't seen for hours and hours later, but the moment you talk to that particular NPC, which one you get is irrevocably set and the other one is permanently unavailable.
  • Whether you get Shadow Ukon or Jubei is decided by whether you looked at a particular mural in an unrelated dungeon; if you look at it, then much later in the game, you will get Shadow Ukon; otherwise, you get Jubei. In both cases, not only is there no indication of why you got one character over the other; there's no indication (outside the cast roll) that the character you missed even exists.
  • Some of the recipes for spells and weapon enchantments. Some spells can be discovered by reverse-engineering ones you found or by modifying them slightly; and some of both are told to you during sidequests (and others can be logically determined by making substitutions in those.) But a few are completely secret and can only be discovered from a guide or with huge amounts of trial and error. On top of that, some equipment will just never gain special abilities from enchanting it with stones (with no indication that that's the problem); other equipment will randomly break. Only a few pieces of equipment both gain abilities from enchantment and won't break afterwards, and for the most part there's no indication of which equipment this is.
• Hidden Elf Village: Kamui village and Nonmarteau. The former is a small village located in the very northern end of the Karahoto Kingdom The later is even more hidden, you need a fully-upgraded Blue Submarine to access the blocked underground passages.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: In-universe. Gedo is remembered as a "dark lord" who nearly destroyed the world when fighting the heroic Dharma Djinn; in reality, the two were on the same side and the destruction was a result of him and the Dharma Djinn fighting against the actual villain.
• Incendiary Exponent: One of Gedo's skills allows him to set himself on fire (taking constant damage) in order to increase his damage.
• Instrument of Murder: Garasya fights using a giant bell which he uses as a flail during battle and can even be used to trap an enemy.
• Insurmountable Waist-High Fence: All over the place, of course, but in particular, Heian palace has the most obvious path to the throne room blocked by little chains hung across the hall, with a 'no entrance' sign hanging on them. Your characters respect these chains and will not pass them while fighting their way through armored guards to the throne room to kill the palace's lord. And you'll still have to take the long way around it when revisiting the palace even once he's gone.
• Intelligible Unintelligible: Prince Rikoudo, who roars instead of talking. Mahouin somehow has no trouble understanding him (and repeats everything he says in a "so, you're saying..." way for the audience.)
• It's Up to You: Subverted with a few of the sidequests in Daito; if you don't deal with the haunted tower in the southeast before you beat Oboro Shikibu, say, a nameless new city guard recruit will deal with it for you. Naturally, it's played straight with anything relevant to the main plotline.
• Jerkass: Judge. While respected as a sacred priest and sacred keyholder of the Blue Treasures, he's not liked by almost eveyone due to his abrasive personality and arrogance. He continually rejects the Player as the heir of the Blue Castle despite mounting evidence, defeating in battle twice and even helping him from certain death does nothing to change it. It takes Professor Ren slapping him and demanding an ultimatum to finally force him to accept the truth.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: Kokuyo, a.k.a The Masked Onyx towards his Axe-Crazy sister Kohaku. He cares little of everything else besides her needs and safety and is quite willing to join and cooperate with Mahouin to free her. The old woman in the town of Kizan notes how he's basically spoiling her.
• Large Ham: Judge. His reactions when you claim to be the heir of the Blue Castle are hilariously over-the-top; and once he joins you, he makes a huge ritual of it every time he gives you the key to open a blue chest.
• Lethal Joke Weapon: The Indestructible Dagger looks like its name is an ironic joke at first, since while it has a very high attack power for when you get it, it has a 50% chance of breaking after every fight (and you buy it in a junk shop, of all places.) However, unlike most weapons, its break chance decreases when you enchant it, rather than increasing; it's one of the few weapons in the game that has a 0% break chance when fully enchanted.
• Load-Bearing Boss: Oboro Shikibu's castle collapses when she dies. Hanzou sort of shouts something about why, but it doesn't really make sense when you think about it, since Oboro Shikibu is supposed to be a ghost haunting a castle that already existed...
• Ma'am Shock: Despite being twenty-five years old, Professor Ren gets called an old lady by Tenkamaru, Judge and even the female hero if they bathe together in the Kizan Hotsprings, much to her exasperation.
• Obviously Evil: Everyone realizes that Mahouin is evil. Everyone. Random NPCs you meet in the street will complain about how evil he is. It helps that under his rule, the capital has literally started to drip with evil and part of it literally falls into hell. Similarly, nobody has the slightest trouble realizing that Suigetsu has turned evil since he started hanging around with Mahouin; for the first part of the game, it's pretty much all anyone says about him.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Professor Ren. A Gadgeteer Genius knowledgeable enough to create robots and modify ancient technology, can translate ancient languages and can even invent a cure against a Zombie Apocalypse.
• Orphan's Plot Trinket: The letter you begin the game with.
• Miko: Princess Wakana; her skills and abilities are mostly based on this. Or her initial ones, anyway, since she has a secret second skillset based on the fact that she's actually a robot.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • If you don't recruit Tenkamaru before beating Oboro Shikibu, you'll never be able to get him.
  • You have to choose between Kashin Koshi and Kagura, and between Shadow Ukon and Jubei; whichever one you pick, the other one of that pair will be lost. To make it worse, the actions that decide which one you get are a Guide Dang It! in each case.
  • Fail to save Judge before you beat Bebiron Tower, and he'll die, so you can never recruit him. Oh, and he's the only one who can open the blue treasure chests you've seen scattered everywhere, so all the unique equipment and items in them will be lost forever, too, including some of the best equipment in the game. Also, you won't be able to get your hydrofoil, or its submarine upgrade, or the large amount of stuff you can only get with those things. Fortunately the game has the cut-to-villains cutscenes basically hammer you over the head with "you imprisoned that lizardman?" "Yes, hopefully the players will never rescue the very important lizardman, who I imprisoned at..." over and over for pretty much every relevant cutscene during the window when he's available.
  • If you don't save Garasya (via a quest started in Garuda) after beating Bebiron Tower and before beating Kohaku and Kokuyo, he'll die and will be lost. Unlike Judge, there is no hint that he's in any danger and no reason for the player to revisit that area.
  • Any quests in Daito will be lost when the corresponding part of the city falls into Makai, so make sure you do quests there at the earliest opportunity if you want to finish them; likewise, the shops there will be lost as the game progresses (and some of them are the only place where you can buy particularly powerful gear).
  • If you don't bring Tenkamaru with you when you go to fight his archnemesis, he'll never get the Ogre Horns back, keeping him very weak and preventing him from learning his most powerful techniques.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Gedo; in the past, his fight with the Dharma Djinn nearly destroyed the world, and he's now remembered only as a "dark lord" who threatened the world. The above is a mythological version of the real story, both Gedo and the Dharma Djinn fought and defeated the Colossus, a battle which devastated half of the world.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: Tenkamaru, an ogre child quite capable of dishing heavy physical damage than most of your party members.
• Player Headquarters: Blue Castle; reviving it is your first major quest. It's plot-important, since reviving it is your proof that you're the heir of the Blue Clan and successor of Tentei.
• Power Up Letdown: Shadow Ukon has an unremoveable Evolving Weapon that becomes more powerful as she gains levels; it also has an activated effect that will strike an enemy and try to afflict them with a status effect. The status effect changes as she gains levels... which is where this trope comes into play. At low levels it will inflict things like accuracy debuffs that work on everything and are extremely effective in long boss fights; at high levels, on the other hand, it will try to inflict Useless Useful Spell debuffs that inevitably bounce off the Contractual Boss Immunity of anyone you would actually care about using them on.
• Proud Merchant Race: The Turks, a rat-like race that has existed for a long time, are well known for their mercantile skills, with their headquarters currently located in Shanghai.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Suigetsu while in evil-mode.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: Princess Wakana... sort of. She passes perfectly as a human physically as long as she doesn't get injured, but once you find out the truth it suddenly becomes obvious why she's an Emotionless Girl.
• Robotic Reveal: Princess Wakana is actually an artificial human created by Suigetsu to serve as a daughter for Tentei; you find this out when he cuts off one of her arms and she exhibits no more than minor annoyance. Afterwards, she unlocks a secret second set of skills she can switch to based on using her robotic parts rather than her usual spiritual powers.
• Schizo Tech: Even more so than usual for the series. The setting is, in theory, a Jidaigeki-style fantasy feudal Japan, but Blue Clan's technology is clearly futuristic, and much of it has been adopted and modified by various people in the setting.
• Sequel Hook: The game ends adruptly after defeating the Final Boss, leaving plotpoints and mysteries unanswered with a The Stinger revealing Big Bad Medicus somehow alive despite being killed in battle and vowing We Will Meet Again and the game revealing that Oriental Blue: Ao No Tengai is only Chapter 2 of a planned series that unfortunately was never made.
• Sequence Breaking: The game is a bit of a wide-open sandbox, which lets you do some things out of order; in particular, you can in theory beat Masked Onyx long before you're supposed to, almost as soon as the game begins. Doing so changes a few cutscenes where he appears later on.
• Summon Magic: Both types.
  • Suigetsu can summon paper shikigami to assist in combat; they stick around attacking automatically until they're 'killed', and mostly serve to distract the enemy by taking hits for you.
  • Garasya summons the gods of his region for powerful attacks that hit everyone.
• Tin Man: Gedo, despite his robotic speech and stoic face is quite capable of expressing his emotions like feeling sadness towards his previous past as a Person of Mass Destruction.
• Teaser Equipment: All over the place. Daito, for instance, has a shop in the merchant district which sells endgame gear right from the start for several hundred thousand gold. Kuron, likewise, has a secret shop near the docks that sells insanely valuable gear for suitably high prices.
• Unwitting Pawn: Mahouin to the real Big Bad Medicus. He's been led to believe that breaking the seal on Daito would result in a Hell on Earth scenario, only to realize too late that he just released an ancient Doomsday Device called the Colossus. Medicus then "thanks" him by using him as a Living Battery for the Dark Orb.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Shadow Ukon feels this way after finally killing Oboro Shikibu, and joins your party permanently to try and work it out.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: All the time early on; you encounter most of the game's villains several times, and they always escape after your first few fights. Subverted, however, if you have Shadow Ukon with you when you fight Oboro Shikibu (since Shadow Ukon's motive is entirely focused on getting revenge on Oboro Shikibu); though she tries to fade out and promises to get you later, Shadow Ukon isn't taking any of it and lunges across the room to impale her on the wall with her sword, meaning you don't have to fight her again later on.
• Warp Whistle: The Guide Unit you get after reviving Blue Castle summons a flying machine to take you to any city you previously visited.
• We Can Rebuild Him: After Princess Wakana is literally reduced to a head at the hands of the Masked Onyx, you can have the option to have Suigetsu restore her body although will put him out of commission for a long period of time before he will repairs her.
• Yandere: Shikibu Oboro. Once a servant girl who's love for Tentei turned into a murderous desire to have him for herself, a desire so strong that it turned her into murderous and powerful ghost upon her death.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Wan E. Wan has causing this as his main goal, with several sidequests and plot-events based on his efforts to cause it in a localized fashion.