Sunrider / Characters

This page lists tropes for the characters in the Sunrider visual novel series.

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.

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Sunrider Crew

Kayto Shields

Voiced by: Jonathan Michael Cooke (EN)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kayto_character_ld.jpg

"Vanguards, Fire!!"

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.

Always Save the Girl: 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; 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 The Hero played a role.
Arch-Enemy: He comes to see the 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 - 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.
Ass Kicking Pose: "Fire the Vanguard Cannon!"
The Atoner: The Captain's Return is about this trope, combined with He's Back!. Apart from stopping Crow Harbor, the whole game is about him getting his team back together, cleaning up the mess he left behind following the Liberation Day Massacre, and slowly pulling himself out of his drunken stupor and Revenge Before Reason that have consumed him.
Becoming the Mask: Invoked by Kayto himself in The Captain's Return; 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 The Hero, but as time passed it became more a coping mechanism for his Survivor Guilt 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.
Black-and-White Insanity: Leans into this trope as the war against PACT raged, which is further reinforced after 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 Revenge Before Reason 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. 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.
The Captain: Captains the Sunrider and is in charge of commanding all attached forces and the Vanguard Cannon. Later on, he commands the Maray as part of Ryuvia's rebuilding military initiative under Asaga.
Clueless Chick-Magnet: 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.
Cosmic Plaything: 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. It only gets worse when he finds out he literally was a plaything at the hands of Claude, who is a Physical God 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.
Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: 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 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:
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-ryder combat.
Ava: Sir?
Kayto: Do it now. (...) Form a defensive line in front of the shield cruisers! The prototypes intend to sacrifice all their ryders to take them out!
Expository Hairstyle Change: Twofold in The Captain's Return;
- The fourth game starts with Kayto looking like a disheveled bum with shoulder-length hair and Perma-Stubble, reflecting the drunken depression he's fallen into in the six years since Liberation Day.
- 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 Older and Wiser than he used to be.
A Father to His Men: Do not threaten the people under Kayto's command. It will not end well for you. However, this very trait gets deconstructed in that it 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. 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 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.

Godzilla Threshold: In Chapter 7 of The Captain's Return, 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.

He Who Fights Monsters: 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 his past self becomes a Jerkass who acts as if he’s possessed by the Prototypes and several characters call him out on it; Ava in particular outright calls him insane.
The Hero: The captain of the Sunrider and later on the Maray, and leader of La Résistance against PACT. 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.
Heroic Sacrifice: At the end of Liberation Day, he 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.
Hero with Bad Publicity: Became this after Liberation Day, due to it getting out via Fontana that the (albeit 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. 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.
I Am the Noun: Inverted, as it's another character's describing of Kayto. 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.
I Hate Past Me: In [RE]turn, a temporally-displaced Kayto quickly grows exasperated with how his past self refuses to even consider the possibility that Chigara is a Prototype spy, and apologizes to Ava for his past bullheadedness. 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.
"I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: When 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. He succeeds, only for Fontana to gun her down.
Know When to Fold 'Em: In The Captain's Return, Kayto and his crew are getting their asses kicked by 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 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.
Leaning on the Fourth Wall: 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.
My God, What Have I Done?: Comes up twice in The Captain's Return;
- 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.
- He has this reaction after Asaga nearly pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to save him from the Prototypes, lamenting in an emotional breakdown at her bedside about how chasing Qrow Harbor to amend his Hero with Bad Publicity status had only caused problems for everyone.
Oblivious to Love: 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 Beach Episode he reveals he is actually aware of this and was just playing dumb to avoid an Inappropriately Close Comrades situation. Towards the end of Mask Of Arcadius he abandons this - but unfortunately replaces it with obliviousness to the heartbreak Asaga feels when he starts dating Chigara, blinding him to her mental breakdown.
Official Couple: He enters a romantic relationship with Chigara in Liberation Day, regardless of the player's prior choices. Damn Prototypes.
Older and Wiser: 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.
Plagued by Nightmares: 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. In The Captain's Return, he's very clearly haunted by the Liberation Day Massacre and Chigara's death.
Rags to Royalty: 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. Asaga's epilogue further sets him up to not only become Ryuvia's official military chief, but also the spouse of the Queen herself.
Reasonable Authority Figure: Is usually this to his crew, [RE]turn being a notable exception as he slips into denial over mounting evidence (secretly provided by his future-self) towards Chigara being a Prototype.
Rebel Leader: Leads the battle against PACT.
Ret-Gone: Almost every ending in [RE]turn has his time-travelling future self be erased from existence.
Right for the Wrong Reasons: 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 Manchurian Agent who simply wasn't aware of her true nature.
Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: 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. There is no option to agree with her and sit the rescue out.
Secretly Selfish: invoked directly in Liberation Day, [RE]turn and The Captain's Return;
- In Liberation Day, 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.
- 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.
- 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 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, 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.
Shipper on Deck: 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.
Stop, or I Shoot Myself!: In Sunrider 4, 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.
The Strategist: 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.
Summon Bigger Fish: 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: summon the Prototypes, who promptly show up in a super-dreadnought powerful enough to bog down most of the Crimson Fleet singlehandedly.
Survivor Guilt: 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 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 attached to Chigara instead. The Captain's Return then adds his surviving the Liberation Day Massacre, the destruction of the Sunrider and outliving Chigara to the list.
Took a Level in Jerkass: In [RE]turn, where his past self refuses to believe the increasingly obvious truth of Chigara being a spy and antagonizes any crew members who confront him about it, instead accusing future Kayto of being the 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 A Father to His Men saw him get little but heartache in return.
Tragic Keepsake: 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 causes him to break down crying.
What You Are in the Dark:
- In Sunrider 4, 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.
  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.
- 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.
White Hair, Black Heart: His past self dips into this in [RE]turn; while not evil, he starts being a Jerkass 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, 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 Revenge Before Reason before finally putting his demons to rest just before the endgame.

Ava Crescentia

Voiced by: Amber Lee Connors (EN); Kisumi Aoi (JP, Liberation Day), Maki Tomonaga (credited as Himari) (JP, The Captain's Return)

"Your orders, Captain?"^{Click here to see Ava as she appears in Liberation Day}

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.

Abusive Parents: 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.
Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: She's tall, beautiful, has waist-length brown hair, and maintains a professional distance from the rest of the crew.
An Arm and a Leg: If she goes through with the below-mentioned Heroic Sacrifice, 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.
Anguished Declaration of Love: Following the Liberation Day massacre, she 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.
Break His Heart to Save Him: 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. It’s not until the very end of Liberation Day, after it’s already backfired horribly, that she can admit she was lying about that.
Can't Refuse the Call Anymore: When Kayto comes to ask her help in taking down Crow Harbor in Sunrider 4, she initially says no. She believes that the threat 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.
The Captain: 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.
Captain Smooth and Sergeant Rough: 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.
Catchphrase:
Absolutely unbelievable...
Childhood Friend Romance: 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.
Da Chief: She even firmly reprimands Kayto on several occasions, despite him outranking her. The others get even less consideration.
Dead Sparks: Ava and Kayto had a close relationship before she left for the navy, but they drifted apart from a lack of contact.
Extra Turn: 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.
Eye Scream: If she goes through with the below-mentioned Heroic Sacrifice, 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.
Eyepatch of Power: If she went through with her Heroic Sacrifice 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 looks indistinguishable from her old one.
Facepalm: Whenever she utters her Catchphrase.
Fashionable Asymmetry: Her new uniform in Sunrider 4 includes a stylish cape which only covers one shoulder.
First Girl Wins: If the player reaches her good end in [RE]turn.
First Love: 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. At first…
Heroic Sacrifice: 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.

Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Ava seems to do most of the day to day work keeping the Sunrider going. Also worth noting is that on [RE]turn Sola, Asaga and Icari still need some help from Ava late in their routes to win while Ava is able to manage by herself.
The "I Love You" Stigma: 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.
Inappropriately Close Comrades: 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 Heroic Sacrifice, sacrificing your one chance to finally destroy the Legion because Kayto can't bear to lose her.
Insecure Love Interest: Shades of this 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.
Insult of Endearment: She calls Kayto "Idiot" but only when she's not really mad. When she is really mad she's icily formal.
Interrupted Declaration of Love: In Sunrider 4, 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 Villainous Rescue.
Mission Control: She's the Sunrider's XO, managing the crew during missions.
My God, What Have I Done?: Implied; 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 Chigara's arms instead of snapping him out of his mental spiral.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: 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 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.
Number Two: 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.
Obstructive Bureaucrat: 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.
Only Sane Woman
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!
- Granted, she has her own quirks, mainly bothering everyone by being a hardass Obstructive Bureaucrat. Liberation Day also sees her write off her suspicions on Chigara being a Prototype despite the obvious resemblances, partly due to Kayto trusting Claude's word and partly due to hopes of letting Chigara make Kayto move on from his lingering feelings for Ava.
Please, Don't Leave Me: In her epilogue for the fourth game, 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.
Pragmatic Hero: 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 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.
Reduced Resource Cost: 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.
Student Council President: 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.
Sugar-and-Ice Personality: 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 usual attitude on the Sunrider's bridge.
Summon Magic: Her Sunrider 4 affection chart contains Orders which let you summon generic friendlies to assist you mid-battle. These friendlies stick around until they get shot down or until the battle is over, then leave.
Took a Level in Kindness: 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. Though her experiences with Kayto and the crew of the Sunrider - including the disastrous results of trying to Break His Heart to Save Him - could be inferred as contributors in their own right.
Unprovoked Pervert Payback: 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.
Ava: Sigh... Calm down, Kayto. It's nothing you haven't seen before.
Kayto: Wait… what? You're... not gonna yell at me?
Ava: No, captain. Sigh... I am getting quite too old for those antics.
"Well Done, Son" Guy: 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. She breaks out of this in her own route, deciding to enter politics instead, at least in part so she can stay with Kayto.
When She Smiles: Ava's generally serious in tone but her rare smiles are quite endearing. In Academy Kayto even jokes about it.
My favourite thing about her is her smile. It's a shame I've never seen it.
Workaholic: As a teenager and Student Council President, she once brought paperwork to an outing at the beach. As an adult and the Sunrider’s Number Two, 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.

Ryder Pilots

Asaga Oakrun

Voiced by: Kira Buckland (EN), Sakura Matsuri (JP)

"A hero of justice!"^{Click here to see Asaga as she appears in Liberation Day}

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.

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.

Ace Pilot: 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.
The Alleged Boss: In The Captain's Return, 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.
Arranged Marriage: In two different universes no less!
- In the main series her father attempts to pursuade Arcadius not to attack Ryuvia by marrying off Asaga to him.
- 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.
Auto-Revive: Her penultimate affection perk, The Hero, lets her resurrect herself at full health once per battle.
Beam Spam: Her usual long range weaponry is almost entirely laser based, though she can acquire kinetic weaponry from the Union store in Liberation Day.
Big Damn Kiss: 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.
Cast from Hit Points: Her Awaken Super Mode costs 100 hit points to activate, and consumes an increasing amount of Asaga's HP for every turn that it stays on.
Critical Status Buff: Her Final Stand perk gives her weapons a chance to deal double damage while she's below 25% of her maximum HP.
Damage-Increasing Debuff: 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.
11th-Hour Superpower: She unlocks the same Awaken skill as Sola during the final battle in Mask of Arcadius. Becomes a Second Hour Superpower in Liberation Day, where she gets the ability during the game's second mission.
Extra Turn: 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.
Fiery Redhead: 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 Shy Blue-Haired Girl.
First-Episode Spoiler: 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.
Having a Blast: Her Fury perk makes the High Roller release an explosion of energy whenever she uses Awakening, damaging all nearby enemy units.
Genki Girl: 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.
Green-Eyed Monster: 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. When she catches the two of them having sex, she starts to snap.
The Hero: What she thinks she is. and an argument could be made for it, if not for the player character being The Captain. She's the one who tends to do flashy, heroic things in battle, and she serves as flight leader for your squadron.
Heroic RRoD: 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. This is demonstrated in-game with how her Super Mode works.
Idiot Hair: Has a large ahoge in Sunrider Academy, emphasizing her ditzy Genki Girl personality. Her main universe counterpart gains one in Liberation Day thanks to Art Evolution, though it’s inconsistently applied^note.
I'm Taking Her Home with Me!: 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).
King Incognito: This freelance Ryder pilot and self-proclaimed hero of justice is really the crown princess of Ryuvia.
Let's Get Dangerous!: Tends to come across as an Idiot Hero off duty, but during actual combat remains remarkably professional bar her silly catchphrases.
Literal Split Personality: 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.
Love Confession: In her ending of The Captain's Return, 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 Big Damn Kiss.
Love Makes You Crazy: 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 her paranoia is not entirely unfounded...
Love Triangle: 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.
Magical Eye: Just like Sola, Asaga's eyes begin to glow when she taps into her Sharr powers.
Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Academy's version of Asaga has a real thing for public indecency.
Mana Burn: 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.
Mildly Military: Which gets her in constant trouble with Ava. Who you support is up to you.
Murder the Hypotenuse: 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.
My God, What Have I Done?: 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.
Rebellious Princess: She ran away to avoid Arranged Marriage with the Big Bad.
Rescue Romance: She develops feelings for Kayto after he rescues her from her wedding ceremony to Arcadius.
Right for the Wrong Reasons: 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 didn't know what she was, truly did fall for Kayto and her eventual betrayal was 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 rejected Kayto's desperate, stress-induced confession to her.
Sanity Slippage: In Liberation Day her suspicions about Chigara being a Prototype sent to spy on and manipulate Kayto, coupled with her overuse of her Sharr powers, cause her to develop a "justice"-obsessed Superpowered Evil Side.
Split Personality: Seemingly develops one as a consequence of overusing her Super Mode in Liberation Day. While the normal Asaga is a cheerful Genki Girl, this new personality is a merciless Knight Templar 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.
Super Mode: 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, while also draining an increasing amount of her hit points every turn.
Superpowered Evil Side: Asaga's Super Mode erodes her sanity and leads to her becoming increasingly jealous and violent, twisting her into a Knight Templar.
Taking You with Me: If you choose to let her kill Chigara in [RE]turn mode, Asaga will ram her crippled Black Jack into the Liberty, killing them both.
Walking Armory: 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.
What the Hell, Hero?: 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.
Yandere: In Liberation Day her friendship with Chigara crumbles due to their mutual attraction to Kayto, 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 Murder the Hypotenuse.
You Are the Translated Foreign Word: She's the Sharr of Ryuvia.

Chigara Lynn Ashada

Voiced by: Mary Morgan (EN), Yomogi Kasumi (JP)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/chigara_ashada_920.jpg

"Ah! Captain?"^{Click here to see Chigara as she appears in Liberation Day}

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.

Chigara's Ryder is the Liberty, a fragile and lightly-armed machine that can support its allies with shielding, in-battle repairs, and Status Buffs.

A-Cup Angst: At one point, she worries about having to compete for the Captain's attention with Claude's boobs.
Ambiguous Situation: 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 lose it's individually via merging with Alice's.
Came Back Wrong: Played with; Her and Alice's wills 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 Death of Personality, as it's implied Omega and the Aberrant Prototype are new individuals born from a mix-and-match of Chigara and Alice's memories.

Demonic Possession: She's taken over by Arcadius/Alice during the Liberation Day ceremony, causing her to unwillingly massacre the assembled delegates.
Died in Your Arms Tonight: Because of the above, Fontana shoots her and she dies in Kayto's arms.
Dying as Yourself: 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 Death of Personality for both as what was left became the deranged Omega and her Aberrant elite.
Gadgeteer Genius: She built the Black Jack and the Liberty herself, and quickly establishes herself as the Sunrider's Chief Engineer.
Honey Trap: 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.
I Just Want to Be Normal: 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. 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.
I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In the good endings of [RE]turn 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.
Living Emotional Crutch: 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. It's 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.
The Lost Lenore: 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.
Love Triangle: 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 Asaga's sanity.
Manchurian Agent: 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 Hive Mind - 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.
The Mole: 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. 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: Claude was.
Official Couple: Despite the Love Triangle between herself, Kayto, and Asaga, Chigara and Kayto have become this by Liberation Day. Unfortunately.
Rei Ayanami Expy: In a different manner than Sola; Chigara is part of an army of blue-haired genetically-engineered clones, and even has a similar hairstyle to Rei.
Second Love: Chigara becomes this for Kayto after Ava rejects him toward the end of Mask of Arcadius.
Secretly Selfish: 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 - 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.
Shy Blue-Haired Girl: She's shy, blue-haired, 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 Fiery Redhead.
Sole Survivor: Chigara is the only person to survive the Diode Catastrophe, in which most of her home planet was swallowed up by a black hole. Except she's not.
Split-Personality Merge: At the end of Liberation Day, Chigara's personality 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.
Third-Person Person: Chigara occasionally slips into this.
Tomato in the Mirror: She's one of the Prototypes, designated as a C8 model; a realization she does not take well, especially when it calls into question how genuine her initial feelings for Kayto actually were.
True Neutral: 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. Of course, her infatuation with him might be the reason for suppressing her distaste for certain ideas.
Twin Switch: In the Academy spinoff, Lynn makes a bet with Chigara that Shields can only tell them apart due to their Identical Twin ID Tag. 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 Bed Trick, leaving Chigara even more heartbroken.
Verbal Tic: Her constant nervous laughter when making small talk highlights her lack of social skills.
Walking Spoiler: It’s a bit hard to discuss her without revealing that she’s a Prototype.
White Mage: Her combat skills focus mainly on repair abilities and ally Status Buffs.
You Are Number 6: Alpha refers to her as a C8-model Prototype during their chat in the mind stream.

Cosette Cosmos

Voiced by:Jill Harris (EN), Hayase Yayoi (JP)

"I'll burn 'em all!"

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.

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.

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.
Ax-Crazy: As the story progresses and she keeps racking up defeats at the hands of the Sunrider, she grows increasingly unhinged.
Berserk Button: She does not enjoy being called little.
Chainsaw Good: 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.
Chronically Crashed Car: The Calamity gets destroyed every time she fights Kayto in The Captain's Return. Eventually she stops numbering them and names the final model Calamity Mk FUCK3q2u84h3q9r.
Compensating for Something: 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.
Crippling Overspecialization: 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.
Cutting Off the Branches: She reappears in the fourth game regardless of if the player chose to let Asaga kill her in Liberation Day.
Dark and Troubled Past: She suffered Ongessite poisoning that stunted her growth, and was forcibly prostituted by her mother.
Enemy Mine: 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.
Gatling Good: The Havoc is also armed with a gatling cannon that's just as long as the aforementioned chainsaw.
Invincibility Power-Up: Maxing out Cosette's affection meter will unlock the Finest Hour order, which makes the Maray invulnerable to regular attacks for three turns.
Know When to Fold 'Em: In her ending for ''The Captain's Return', 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.
The Napoleon: She has a massive complex about her height and apparent age, and is quite a violent individual.
Not in This for Your Revolution: She can 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 Last Stand to save Cera.
Older Than They Look: 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. The Captain's Return later implies this was deliberately done alongside operations to change her appearance.
Optional Party Member: Depending on choices made in the first game, she can be captured and pressganged into the Sunrider's crew during Liberation Day.
Pirate Girl: Space Pirate variant.
Space Pirate: The leader of a group of them.
Starter Villain: She's the first major antagonist you fight, though more competent than the later Cullen.
Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: She can die at the end of Liberation Day's opening mission, depending on the player's decisions in Mask of Arcadius.
Revenge Before Reason: When posed with a chance for revenge against the Alliance, Cosette is more than willing to let Grey detonate Ongess and kill millions.
Unexplained Recovery: 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.
Villain Decay: 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.
Walking Spoiler: She's in the Ryder Pilots section of the cast for a reason.

Icari Isidolde

Voiced by: Aimee Smith (EN), Haruna Ren (JP)

"I'm not doing this b-because I like you!"^{Click here to see Icari as she appears in Liberation Day}

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.

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.

Ambiguously Bi: Icari is indisputably attracted to Kayto (much as she might try to deny it), but there’s also enough Homoerotic Subtext between her and Kryska that other characters will comment on it in order to get under her skin.
Chain Lethality Enabler: 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.
Close-Range Combatant: In battle, her strengths lie in quickly closing with an enemy ryder and delivering a devastating melee attack, then fading back into cover.
Crippling Overspecialization: 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 Scratch Damage against any level of armor).
Dark and Troubled Past: 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.
Fat Suit: Wore one once to impersonate "a low-level PACT veniczar".
Fragile Speedster: 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.
From Nobody to Nightmare: One bad day turned her from the child of freelance explorers to a mercenary who'll do just about anything for revenge on her parent's killers.
Freudian Slip: She blurts out that she likes Kayto while questioning what the rest of the crew sees in him after all the screw-ups that he’s made.
Heel–Face Turn: 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.
Hitman with a Heart: She might be an amoral mercenary and assassin, but she draws the line at killing children.
Homoerotic Subtext: 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.
Katanas Are Just Better: Her primary weapon in the Phoenix and in person.
The Lancer: 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.
Meaningful Name: 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.
My God, What Have I Done?: 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.
The Nicknamer: She refers to Kryska as "soldier boy" and Claude as "Chest Rockets."
Not So Stoic: 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.
Odd Friendship: With Kryska. Despite one being a disciplined, professional soldier and the other being an easily-flustered, emotional mercenary, the two of them get along very well both on and off the battlefield.
Reduced Resource Cost: One of Icari's relationship bonuses in Sunrider 4 reduces the cost of after-battle repairs by 15%, saving you some valuable credits.
Stealth in Space: 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 Fragile Speedster issues. In Sunrider 4 it's a tool to Reduce Aggro, making enemy units more likely to target somebody else.
Tsundere: Icari is a fairly extreme Type A, being a temperamental mercenary who vehemently denies having feelings for Kaito.
I'm not doing this because I like you!
Red Oni, Blue Oni: 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.
Right for the Wrong Reasons: She argues to Kryska not to turn herself in after helping to destroy Machiavelli Actual as it would just result in a Kangaroo Court and being executed for treason. 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.
Unscrupulous Hero: 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.
Vitriolic Best Buds: 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.
What Does She See in Him?: Thanks to the above Freudian Slip, she ends up doing this to herself:
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 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 vaporized our ship! Ah, the most unreliable space captain in the history of space captains! I can’t believe 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)

Claude Triello

Voiced by: Sydney P. (EN), Murasaki Nina (JP, Liberation Day), Ayane Mako (JP, The Captain's Return)

"Captain~, you better keep your eyes on me~"^{Click here to see Claude as she appears in Liberation Day}

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.

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.

Alternate Self: In her Sunrider 4 ending, 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.
Ambiguously Evil: 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 purely for amusement and is The Mole who works alongside the Prototypes and will manipulate her allies regardless.
Anti-Debuff: Her Restore ability removes all debuffs from its target.
Big Bad Duumvirate: Played with: she works alongside Alice and Alpha and 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 Heel–Face Turn or simply a temporary Enemy Mine. 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 due to her being a Paradox Person. In Sunrider 4, Claude — or rather, Canon — is revealed to be the Greater-Scope Villain, orchestrating the events of the entire series purely to entertain herself.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: While she’s not exactly all that nice, she does have some moments of kindness, like when she helps Chigara hook up with Kayto. It later turns out that she’s a spy, and all her moments of kindness were to further her goals - though she does draw a line at the Liberation Day Massacre and abandons the Prototypes to work with Kayto going forward.
Buxom Beauty Standard: 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.
Custom Uniform: She made her own doctors outfit with a plunging neckline, pink colour scheme and heart-shaped decorations.
Deflector Shields: 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.
The Dog Was the Mastermind: Would you believe she’s The Mole? Or a Physical God?
Even Evil Has Standards: 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.
Game-Over Man: 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.
God Was My Copilot: The end of Liberation Day reveals that your bumbling, sex-crazed medic was The Mole and an omnipotent, time-traveling god all along.
God's Hands Are Tied: 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.
Gravity Master: 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… in cutscenes, anyway.
Great Gazoo: 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 legitimate reasons for why she can’t do that, the main reason she won’t is because 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.
Hospital Hottie: Subverted; she's an unlicensed quack. (She later gets her license reinstated, but Kayto actually asks who she had to bribe to do it.)
Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: In [RE]turn she somehow misses a large robot with a rocket launcher in a straight corridor.
It Amused Me: Ultimately, all of her actions, from joining Kayto's crew on, are because she's bored and looking for entertainment.
Jerkass Gods: Her main concern is entertaining herself, regardless of how much suffering she puts others through in the process.
Little Miss Almighty: This young-ish looking woman is effectively a god.
Lovable Sex Maniac: 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 Played for Laughs.
Meaningful Name: 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.
Mildly Military: She has even less discipline than Asaga.
Mechanically Unusual Class: 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 Short-Range Shotgun.
The Mole: 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.
Naughty Nurse Outfit: She wears this when she's working in sickbay.
No Fourth Wall: Enters this territory in The Captain's Return following her reveal to Shields during his capture by Fontana.
Not in This for Your Revolution: She's in it to get into the captain's pants! And also cause she’s working with the bad guys. And cause it’s fun. She'll actually pretend to fall asleep if you try and talk to her about the fate of the galaxy.
Not So Omniscient After All: 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 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..
Ms. Fanservice: 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 Naughty Nurse Outfit 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.
Obfuscating Stupidity: Claude may act like an airheaded bimbo most of the time, but she's a lot smarter and craftier than she lets on. She drops most of her quirks when revealing her true nature to Kayto in the fourth game.
Physical God: She's a dimension-hopping reality-warping entity of the Trickster God variant.
Pink Is Erotic: She has pink hair, wears a pink plugsuit and pilots a pink Ryder. She's also the resident Ms. Fanservice and the most lascivious member of the crew by a country mile.
Playful Hacker: 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.
Really 700 Years Old: If her secret ending is any indication, she’s existed since the days of the Ryuvia Empire.
Shipper with an Agenda: 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. This is because Chigara is a Prototype sleeper-agent sent to seduce Kayto, and Claude, their collaborator, is making sure that it happens.
Spell My Name With An S: 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.
Support Party Member: 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.
Talking Is a Free Action: She gives a moving speech in the middle of a battle to 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.
Time Master: 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; create thousands of duplicates of herself; create pocket dimensions within subspace; create and destroy alternate timelines and universes; and even 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.
Time Travel: Claude is able to do this through unknown means, which effectively makes her omnipotent by this setting's rules.
Torpedo Tits: The Spellcaster's torpedo tubes are built into its torso, in exactly the place you would expect a pervert like Claude to put them.
Victoria's Secret Compartment: 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.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: For all her antics, it’s implied that she’s working with the Prototypes to deal with the living paradox that is 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 setting up an entertaining conflict for her to watch.
Walking Spoiler: 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.
Wingding Eyes: Gets hearts in her eyes whenever she’s feeling amorous towards Kayto.

Kryska Stares

Voiced by:Cayla Martin (EN), Yumeno Usagi (JP)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kriska_stares_8140.jpg

"Awaiting orders, sir!"^{Click here to see Kryska as she appears in Liberation Day}

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.

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.

24-Hour Armor: As Captain Paladin, Kryska wears a suit of knight-like Power Armor 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.
Aggressive Negotiations: Several of her battle quotes reference this trope, particularly the ones that play when she hits an enemy.
"Weaponized diplomacy was successful!"
"Surrender, or I will resume hostilities."
"Do you still refuse to negotiate?"
Ambiguously Gay: 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^noteapart from Chigara who can't be romanced by Kayto in the [RE]turn scenarios 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.
Auto-Revive: 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.

Char Clone: Becomes one in The Captain's Return of the Dark Messiah type as the Paladin, while wearing a helmet like Iron Mask.
Critical Status Buff: 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.
Dark and Troubled Past: 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.
Do-Anything Soldier: 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.
Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: 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.
Homoerotic Subtext: 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.
Last Chance Hit Point: 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.
Mighty Glacier: 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.
The Mole: 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.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: 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, including a little girl whose only crime was to pick up a knife—can convince Kayto that the Alliance is not to be trusted.
The Not-Love Interest: 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 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.
Odd Friendship: With Icari. Despite one being a disciplined, professional soldier and the other being an easily-flustered, emotional mercenary, the two of them get along very well both on and off the battlefield.
Patriotic Fervor: 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.
I'll show you the might of the Solar Alliance!
Practical Taunt: The Paladin's Drawfire skill, which makes enemy units more likely to target the Paladin and also drastically increases its armour.
Rank Up: She's been promoted to captain by the time of Sunrider 4.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: 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.
Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Has standing orders to execute Shields at the end of Liberation Day, but renounces her allegiance to the Alliance after Icari intervenes.
Shipper on Deck: 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.
Survival Through Self-Sacrifice: Deconstructed during the Trial of Kryska Stares. She wanted to be punished following 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 a contributing factor to her leaving the Solar Alliance for good.
Turns Red: Deals significantly more damage at low health.

Sola vi Ryuvia

Voiced by: Tina Kim (EN), Nakase Hina (JP, Liberation Day), Mami Yahiro (JP, The Captain's Return)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sola_3176.jpg

"Captain?"^{Click here to see Sola as she appears in Liberation Day}

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.

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.

Abusive Parents: 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".
Always Accurate Attack: 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.
Anchored Attack Stance: 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.
Antiquated Linguistics: Has a very formal way of speaking with clipped and un-emotive phrasings, in line with her being royalty 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.
Arbitrary Weapon Range: Sola's Archangel can't hit targets at close range.
Armor-Piercing Attack: 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.
Ascended Meme: 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 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 rather ample backside that Kayto has some trouble keeping his eyes off and even wonders if she's deliberately showing it off or not.
Belief Makes You Stupid: 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.
Beware the Quiet Ones: Silent, yet exceedingly deadly.
Big Damn Kiss: 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 Relationship Upgrade.
Can't Hold Her Liquor: 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.
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?
Cast from Hit Points: Her Awaken Super Mode consumes 75 hit points upon activation. Averted in Sunrider 4, where activating it costs energy instead.
Cold Sniper: She is an aloof woman who specializes in long-range combat.
Damage-Increasing Debuff: 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 ignore armor outright by the time she gets this, but it does leave the victim more vulnerable to the rest of your squadron.
Dark and Troubled Past: 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 - 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.
Eleventh Hour Super Power: Sola activates a greater Awakening at the end of The Captain's Return, replacing her slow movement with the map-spanning Warp ability.
Expository Hairstyle Change: 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.
Fish out of Temporal Water: She's from several thousand years ago, found in stasis. Although in fact she's only been in stasis a few months, having actually time travelled unintentionally.
Flawed Prototype: 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.
Glass Cannon: 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 Awakening her rifle is THE most powerful weapon available to you outside of rockets and the Vanguard Cannon.
Good Feels Good: 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.
Heroic Bastard: She was born from the affair of a Ryuvian prince with a farm girl.
Heroic BSoD: 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.
Sola: 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!
Heroic RRoD: 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 Super Mode.
Hidden Backup Prince: 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.
Improbable Aiming Skills: 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 Super Mode, she can hit any enemy unit from any distance with 100% accuracy.
- 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.
Love Confession: 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.
Living Relic: The Empire 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.
Magical Eye: 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. Near the end of the fourth game, this extends to both her eyes after unlocking her full powers.
Mana Burn: Her Reactor Shot affection perk makes her shots deplete the target's Energy when shooting them in the back.
Meaningful Name: Her name means "lonely" or "alone" in Spanish, befitting her solitary nature and status as a Living Relic.
Miko: She's a shrine maiden in the Sunrider Academy spinoff game.
Miles to Go Before I Sleep: 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. After Crow bites it, her goal becomes protecting Kayto and Asaga while they re-establish Ryuvia.
Mystical White Hair: Her snow-white hair hints at her origins as the princess of an ancient kingdom.
My Master, Right or Wrong: In Liberation Day, 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.
One-Hit Polykill: Another unlockable ability in The Captain's Return — her shots will pierce through targets, dealing half damage in subsequent hits.
The Quiet One: She's a girl of few words.
Paradox Person: Her Sunrider Academy counterpart is a "fragment" of the main universe's Sola, and should not exist.
Reduced Mana Cost: Her Inner Peace perk lets her activate Awakening for free when the Archangel is at full Energy.
Rei Ayanami Expy: Short white hair, golden eyes, supernatural origins, and a stoic and quiet personality. Bonus points for being described as "The Ayanami" by the developers.
Ret-Gone: 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.
The Scapegoat: 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.
Shell-Shocked Veteran: 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.
Spell My Name With An S: In Mask of Arcadius, the game itself and its promotional materials disagreed on whether the 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.
The Stoic: Very stone-faced and reserved in both words and expressiveness.
Sugar-and-Ice Personality: She's stoic, reserved, distant and slow to trust, but loyal to a fault and a kind-natured person at heart.
Supernatural Gold Eyes: She has amber-gold eyes and she's a descendant of the royal Ryuvian Bloodline.
Super Mode: Her Awaken skill, which increases Sola's accuracy and damage output for three turns 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).
Token Religious Teammate: Sola is the only member of the crew to express any religious beliefs. While this sometimes leads to situations that could be characterized as Belief Makes You Stupid, her detailed knowledge of Ryuvian holy texts and religious customs comes in handy more than once.
Warrior Princess: She's the Sharr of Ryuvia, a princess required to fight and die if necessary in the Holy Ryuvian Empire's defense.

Cera

Maray Shields

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/b6f78312_e5bc_411e_84f9_60994065ea60.png

"Good luck, Kayto!"

Kayto’s goofy little sister. Was killed in the attack on Cera, but plays a major role in Academy.

Backup from Otherworld: 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.
Death by Origin Story: She dies in the attack on Cera that kicks off First Arrival.
Little Sister Heroine: Subverted, as she isn’t available as a love interest in Academy despite having the trappings of this, and pokes fun at the idea.
Lost Lenore: A major source of grief for Kayto.
Lovable Sex Maniac: Loves eroges and Yaoi, constantly pries into Kayto’s sex life, and passes out from bleeding when Fontana takes off his shirt.
Posthumous Character: In the main series she dies in the attack on Cera City during the prologue. Thankfully the Academy version suffers no such fate.
Romantic Wingman: Acts as this in both the Ceran flashback sequences and in Academy.
Shipper on Deck: Towards Kayto and Ava in the Ceran flashback, and towards Kayto and whichever girl he picks in Academy.
Yaoi Fangirl: She even says “the only love is Boys' Love.”
You Watch Too Much X: Kayto tells her she plays too many eroges.

Miirage Foster

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.

Malicious Slander: 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".
No True Scotsman: 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.
The Quisling: 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.

Solar Alliance

Harold Grey

"Sit down boy, and let me show you War."

The commander of the Alliance Fleets, Admiral Grey is your main contact within the Alliance and a sworn enemy of PACT.

Badass Boast: "Sit down son, and let me show you war!"
Character Death: He gets fatally shot by Chigara at the end of Liberation Day.
Chest of Medals: The left breast of his uniform is almost entirely covered with medals.
Frontline General: It’s explicitly mentioned that he commands his battles personally.
Generation Xerox: Comes from a long line of fleet officers.
The Ghost: In Sunrider Academy, where a teacher called Mr Grey is often referenced but never appears.
Meaningful Name: He has more than a few shades of grey in his character.
- Also carries over to his flagship, dubbed Machiavelli Actual, reflecting his ruthless approach.
Southern Gentleman: His character design and manner of speaking resemble this archetype, appropriately enough given that the Alliance is a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of America.
Taking You with Me: Attempts this in Liberation Day;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.
War Is Hell: Disapproves of idealistic choices, arguing that they have no place in war.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: Grey may be your ally, but he’s aware war is a Dirty Business and will do anything to secure victory.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.

Edward Storn

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...

An Arm and a Leg: He sports a prosthetic left arm during the Trial. He later explains to Veniczar Fontana that the original arm froze solid and shattered while he was drifting through space after being blasted out of the Machiavelli Actual.
Create Your Own Villain: 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.
Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: 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. He's also a spy for PACT.
Fat Bastard: Storn is on the portly side and is easily the vilest character affiliated with the Solar Alliance to appear in the series.
The Hedonist: 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.
Hidden Depths: Was in charge of engineering onboard the Machiavelli Actual, meaning he has deep knowledge in how ship and station systems work. 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.
Informed Ability: When he and Kayto end up in a Mexican Standoff, 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, as Kryska blindsides Storn before either man can shoot and beats him to death.
Insane Admiral: This high-ranking admiral is a crazed nihilist perfectly willing to deceive his subordinates and betray his own country for petty and selfish reasons.
The Quisling: Subverted. 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.
Rank Up: He was promoted from Ensign to Rear Admiral and eventually Admiral as a reward for his testimony.
Shadow Archetype: He is basically an older version of Kayto Shields, complete with his gray hair and eyes, if he gave up the fight against PACT.
Shell-Shocked Veteran: 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.
Straw Nihilist: 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.

Alan Grey

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.

The Cavalry Arrives Late: His fleet arrives late until the very end following the mission to stop 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.
Foil: Unlike his grandfather, Alan has no ambitions whatsoever and has put far more faith in the democratic system despite its failures.
Reasonable Authority Figure: 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 Crow Harbor and Fontana getting his hands on said Lost Technology, even when politics hinders his ability to assist.

People's Alliance For Common Treatment

Veniczar B.(Bas) Cullen

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/5db99b4c_47db_4c64_8319_ea27b1e97902.png

"En garde, captain!"

A corpulent admiral within the PACT forces, spearheading their invasion of the Neutral Rim alongside Veniczar Fontana.

Adaptational Nice Guy: 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. Also while he's creepily into the idea of an Arranged Marriage 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.
Berserk Button: Being called "Veniczar Porkchops" infuriates him.
The Brute: He tends to solve his problems through force.
Character Death: He's killed halfway into Mask of Arcadius when Asaga vaporizes his flagship.
Crippling Overspecialization: Cullen excels at 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 goes straight for Cullen, quickly overwhelming him.
Decapitated Army: His death sends the forces under his command into disarray, leaving them easy pickings for the Alliance fleet.
Dirty Old Man: He's not above trying to molest Asaga when he has her at his mercy, even though she's betrothed to his boss.
Fat Bastard: He's obese, a hedonist, and is fond of nuking cities from orbit.
Former Regime Personnel: He originally worked for the New Empire, but defected to PACT to save his own skin.
General Failure: 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.
Pet the Dog: In Sunrider Academy, he kidnaps Asaga and 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.
Smug Snake: He fancies himself a great commander, but he’s pathetic. Even his own comrades mock him.
Starter Villain: 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.

Veniczar B. Fontana

"You do not own PACT."^{Click here to see Fontana as he appears in Liberation Day}

A high ranking admiral within the PACT forces, he is considered to be Arcadius’ right hand man.

Always Someone Better: Finds himself superior to Kayto as commander.

Chest of Medals: 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.
Cynicism Catalyst: The events of Liberation Day made him far more distrustful and vengeful towards others. He lost all faith in the Alliance's trustworthiness after a dying Admiral Gray ordered Cera's destruction in a 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.
The Dragon: To Arcadius.
Dragon Ascendant: By The Captain's Return he's become the unquestioned dictator of a unified PACT and is actively competing with Crow Harbor for the position of Big Bad.
Even Evil Has Standards: 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 Sanity Slippage. 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. 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.
Foil:
- To Grey, high-ranking admirals with a decent reputation as commanders. Fontana uses Honor Before Reason and clear use of wits, whereas Grey is willing to use dirty, underhanded methods.
- 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.
- 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.
Godzilla Threshold: 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".
Heel–Face Revolving Door: Starts out as The Dragon before betraying Arcadius, but is tricked into starting war with the Alliance, but is still trying not to descend into Arcadius’ insanity.
He Who Fights Monsters: 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 Moral Myopia 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, 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.
Hidden Depths: Behind his Malicious Slander of Shields and his attempts to put him down, his actions are more than just his hate for his role in the Liberation Day Massacre. During a conversation with Kuushana, he shares that he is actually scared of Shields upon swearing revenge on him for killing Chigara and even as Veniczar of all of PACT, he will never have the power to quell Kayto’s oath of revenge.
Hero Killer: He kills Chigara for being Alice's triggerman in the Liberation Day Massacre, causing the first major character death of Kayto's crew.
Malicious Slander: 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 kills Crow Harbor and captures Kayto: the PACT Propaganda Machine paints Kayto as The Quisling 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.
Moral Event Horizon: 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.
Motive Decay: Through much of the fourth game, it gradually becomes apparent that Fontana's 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. 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, The Stinger shows him preparing to do the very same thing he vilified Kayto for in his pursuit of "justice"; collaborating with a Prototype - in his case, the captive Alpha.
Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: 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. This reminds Kayto of Chigara and brings back the memory of her death at Fontana's hands, reigniting Kayto's hatred.
Noble Top Enforcer: 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 hellhole of a planet that he or his faction has no connection to whatsoever.
Oh, Crap!: Fontana is left in stunned, slack-jawed disbelief when he sees the Prototype super-dreadnought that just came out of warp to back Shields up at the battle of the World Fountain.
Pet the Dog: He's introduced saving Asaga from the unwanted advances of the loathsome Veniczar Cullen (and insulting him for good measure), indicating his noble qualities right away.
Pretty Boy: Several characters comment on his attractive looks. Played for Laughs 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 ripping off his shirt to let the ladies have their fill of the eye candy.
Title Drop: Does this with the series' own name in The Captain's Return, after Kayto literally surfs the shockwave of a fluctuating star's corona
Fontana: He has become... the Sunrider.
Took a Level in Jerkass: The Captain's Return reveals the events of Liberation Day were something of a Cynicism Catalyst for him, 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 Taking You with Me 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.
Villain Has a Point: While he certainly Took a Level in Jerkass in the fourth installment, and through all of the Malicious Slander, he is not wrong about Kayto causing more harm than good to the galaxy. The most obvious example is his emotional attachment to the Prototypes, namely Chigara, which 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. 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.
Villainous Rescue: He arrives at the World Fountain with PACT's entire navy, just in time to save the Maray from Crow Harbor. Saving them is completely incidental to Fontana's goals though; as soon as Crow Harbor is space dust, he declares that Kayto is under arrest.
Villanous Valour: Compared to the hedonistic slob Cullen or the bloodthirsty Arcadius, Fontana is one of the more moral leaders up until Kuushana's introduction and, even after growing more vindictive after Liberation Day, he still shows more of a nobler side than his predecessors.
- In First Arrival, he chases Cullen away from trying to molest Asaga, clearly disgusted his peer would stoop to such a low.
- 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.
- In Liberation Day, he's quite willing to work with long-time enemies like Admiral Gray and Captain Shields for the greater good 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 possession by Alice) in retaliation for what she's done.
- In The Captain's Return, 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.
Wake-Up Call Boss: He's this in-story, proving to be a lot more cunning and effective than Veniczar Cullen was.
You Fool!: Calls Kayto out on his naivety after he let Chigara end up killing everyone during the Liberation Day ceremony.

Veniczar Arcadius

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/428px_arcadius_portrait_2.png

"HAHAHAHA!!!"^{Click here to see Arcadius unmasked (spoiler)}

"Humanity will find no salvation from us."^{Click here to see true self (spoiler)}

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...

And Now You Must Marry Me: Tries to force Asaga to marry him to gain control of the secrets of ancient Ryuvia.
Artificial Human: The current Arcadius is one of the Prototypes.
Attack Drones: The Nightmare Ascendant can deploy dozens of 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.
Beta Test Baddie: 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 Tomato in the Mirror, below).
Big Bad: As the leader of PACT. Though she’s not the only one.
Big Bad Duumvirate: She works alongside Alpha and Claude, but is planning to betray them to achieve her own ends.
Body Surf: Thanks to the Prototypes' Hive Mind, killing her off for good is nearly impossible: even if her original body is destroyed, she can just take control of another Prototype.
Char Clone: Wears a mask, pilots an Ace Custom Ryder, is searching for ancient Ryuvian Lost Technology for unknown reasons, and is effectively Chigara’s “sister”, due to them both being Prototypes. As a charismatic dictator, fits the Big Bad type of Char Clone. Between her being a Beta Test Baddie and an Omnicidal Maniac, and manipulating the two major factions, Alice is practically a female Rau le Creuset.
Dead Person Impersonation: 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.
The Dragon: Liberation Day reveals her to be this to Alpha, though their endgame goals are nothing alike.
Dramatic Unmask: Fontana unmasks him at the climax of Mask of Arcadius, revealing the fact that Arcadius is a woman who looks exactly like Chigara.

Final Boss: Piloting the Legion in Mask of Arcadius and the Nightmare Ascendant in Liberation Day.
Galactic Conqueror: Plots to conquer all Alliance worlds and other worlds under the guise of "liberation".
Good Scars, Evil Scars: When unmasked, he's the only character in the game to have facial scars, and is unquestionably a villain.
Grand Theft Me: At the end of Liberation Day, 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.
The Heavy: He's the one who leads the enemy force of PACT. 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.
He Who Fights Monsters: He was once a heroic revolutionary fighting against the New Empire, and wants to free the galaxy from the evils of imperialism and humanity. But by the time of the game, he's become a tyrannical, bloodthirsty Evil Overlord Galactic Conqueror.
Hive Queen: Downplayed. She’s working for Alpha, but can still employ some control over the other Prototypes and outright have them disobey Alpha if she so desires.
Humans Are Bastards: 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.
Hypocrite: Talks a lot about freeing the people, but shows all the signs of being an Evil Overlord, including being an unrepentant genocidal butcher.
I Am Legion: She has an army of Expendable Clones of herself, all of whom share a single mind.
Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: When she discovered her true nature, her response was to blow up her home planet of Diode.
Kill All Humans: Her real goal, which puts her at odds with Alpha and Claude.
Legacy Character: The original Arcadius died some time before the story began, with Alice (and her proxies) having taken up his mantle.
Love Makes You Evil: She loved the original Arcadius, but his death at the hands of the people he'd liberated convinced her that Humans Are Bastards and should be wiped out.
Magical Eye: She has the same glowing eyes and Sharr powers as Asaga and Sola, due to "Sharr Myrren's ghost coursing through her veins".
Malevolent Masked Man: Wears a creepy mask with pointed ears at all times. She ditches it in Liberation Day.
Nigh-Invulnerable: The 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 Legion.
Omnicidal Maniac: After Arcadius was been killed by the same people he'd just liberated, Alice decided to wipe out all humans.
Royal "We": Refers to himself with plurals like “we”, “us” or "ours", foreshadowing her true nature as a collective rather than an individual.
Samus Is a Girl: "He" is revealed to be a woman under that mask at the climax of Mask of Arcadius.
Split-Personality Merge: At the end of Liberation Day, 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.
Self-Made Orphan: Killed her creator with her own hands.

Start of Darkness: Sunrider: Veniczar, a prequel novel focusing on their turn to evil.
Tomato in the Mirror: 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 Sanity Slippage and became a Self-Made Orphan.
Villain Override: Assumes direct control of Chigara at the end of Liberation Day, leading to a massacre.
Walking Spoiler: It's very difficult to discuss Arcadius without getting into their true identity.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: He claims to be fighting against imperialism and tyranny, but is willing to commit atrocities in order to do so. Turns out she just wants to Kill All Humans, because she believes that humans are intristically tyrannical and the galaxy would be better without them.
You Are Number 6: Her designation is Prototype 4L1C3.

Veniczar A. Kuushana

Voiced by: Nakase Hina (JP)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sunrider_4_kuushana.png

Kuushana as she appears in Sunrider 4

"Now, let us settle this once and for all: Who is the greater captain, you or I?"

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.

The Ace: She's regarded as PACT's best commander and treated as synonymous with victory by the time of the fourth game.
Ace Custom: 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.
Animal Motif: 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.
Beat Them at Their Own Game: Comes across as this, as she commands an upgraded variant of Kayto's Sunrider in the fourth game. In the endgame, this gets flipped on her when Kayto turns the tables and does the very same thing Kuushana made a name for herself doing to others; pulling off a miraculous win against a superior fighting force.
Chest of Medals: She has five or six medals pinned to her uniform, rather modest in comparison to Admiral Grey.
Custom Uniform: 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.
Cutting the Knot: 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.
David vs. Goliath: 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. 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.
Defector from Decadence: Left PACT after getting fed up with Arcadius.
Everyone Has Standards: 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 La Résistance. In The Captain's Return, she becomes something of a Morality Chain for Fontana as he struggles not to let his fear of Kayto's vendetta turn him into another Alice.
Evil Knockoff: 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.
Kayto: (Seething) You... You have my ship.
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.
Excuse Me While I Multitask: She demonstrates her tactical chops at the climax of The Captain's Return by directing both the macro-level battle against the Prototypes and the micro-level battle against the Maray while simultaneously duking it out with Kayto's Ryders in her own machine.
The Exile: 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.
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 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
Frontline General: 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 Fatal Flaw 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.
Fatal Flaw: As good a leader as she is (and she 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.
The Men First: 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.
Ms. Expostition: Explains the driving force of the previous Arcadius before Fontana took the seat.
Mirror Boss: 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.
Recurring Boss: Depending on whether you count the Run or Die sequence in Chapter 5 as a boss fight, Kuushana is fought four or five times over the course of Sunrider 4.
Red Baron: 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.
Remember the New Guy?: 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.
The Revolution Will Not Be Villified: Declares to act on the savagery of PACT, reforming it into a highly disciplined army against the Solar Alliance.
Walking Spoiler: At least, the fact that she comes back is.
Worthy Opponent: She grows to respect Kayto over the course of The Captain's Return. 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.
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.

Jem'hyre

Kuushana's right-hand woman, Jem'hyre is the sniper of the Wolf Brigade.

Ace Custom: 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.
Beam Spam: 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.
Evil Counterpart: To Sola. Both are stoic, soft-spoken waifs who act as the snipers of their respective Ryder squadrons and serve their leaders with loyalty. She even has her own version of Sola's Sharr powers.
In the Hood: When she isn't piloting a Ryder, she's wearing a big, bulky cloak with the hood pulled down over her head.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her left eye glows red when tapping into her powers.

The Prototypes

The Prototypes are a race of identical vat-grown women with genetically-enhanced intelligence and a Hive Mind. They view themselves as superior to humanity and seek to control mankind from the shadows.

The following tropes apply to the Prototypes as a whole:

Artificial Human: They’re churned out in bulk at a secret cloning facility.
Big Bad: Collectively, they are the main antagonists of the series. They act as The Man Behind the Man 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 Big Bad Ensemble under Omega's leadership near the end of that game.
Clone Army: 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.
Fantastic Caste System: 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.
Hated by All: 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 being behind the Liberation Day massacre. Most governments seemingly have orders to shoot them on sight.
Hive Mind: They are linked together by one called the mind stream. 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.
Honey Trap: 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.
Identical Twin ID Tag: 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.
Man Behind the Man: 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.
Meaningful Name: They’re called Prototypes because they were all prototypes for Alpha, the culmination of their creator’s efforts.
Sci-Fi Bob Haircut: The rank-and-file Prototypes all have this hairstyle.
Speak in Unison: 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.
Super-Intelligence: The Prototypes are naturally smarter than any ordinary human. Even without the assistance of their hive mind, every one of them is a Gadgeteer Genius able to invent machines on par with, or superior to, the most advanced conventional equivalents.
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.
Turned Against Their Masters: They were originally created by scientists on the planet Diode for an unknown purpose. Once Alpha was created and their Hive Mind formed, they decided they didn’t need to take orders and caused the Diode Catastrophe, wiping out their makers.
Uterine Replicator: They’re grown in nutrient-filled tubes.
Villain Override: Higher-ranked Prototypes like Alpha and Alice can take control of the lesser Prototypes whenever they want, turning them into extensions of the higher-ranked Prototypes.
Walking Spoiler: Thier existence as Arcadius makes them this.
What Measure Is a Non-Human?: 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 Hive Mind.
You Are Number 6: 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 Traps.

Prototype L7NN/Lynn

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/b28e466f_9975_4da0_a13c_f31aec78e31d.png

"We are all the children of Diode."

^{Click here to see Lynn as she appears in Sunrider 4}

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.

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.

Abusive Parents: Really, both versions of her are dealing with this, if you stretch the definition of "parent" a bit:
- In Liberation Day 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.
- In Sunrider Academy 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.
Bed Trick: Pulls this on Kayto in Academy's Chigara route by pretending to be Chigara and having sex with him.
Big Bad: In Academy's Chigara route, during which she attempts to steal Kayto away from Chigara.
Combat Medic: 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.
Composite Character: 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 by virtue of being passed over for a "superior" clone of herself. Kayto even references this somewhat by Leaning on the Fourth Wall and saying that in another universe they must be archenemies. L7NN is an enemy but hardly an archenemy, Alice certainly was.
Drone Deployer: 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.
Embarrassing Nickname: Snarkadius.
The Engineer: 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.
Green-Eyed Monster: To Chigara in Academy, since her parents made Chigara as a perfect version of her.
Heel–Face Turn: 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.
Hoist by Their Own Petard: 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.
Identical Stranger: To Chigara.
In-Series Nickname: Kayto dubs her "Snarkadius" for her snarky attitude in Sunrider 4, much to her annoyance.
Loving a Shadow: In Academy, Kayto claims the only reason why she’s so attached to him is that she’s compensating for being The Unfavorite, and trying to show up Chigara.
Manipulative Bastard: 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.
Mr. Exposition: She divulges a lot of information about how the Prototypes work.
The Paralyzer: The Dominator's Disable ability shuts down a single enemy unit for one turn, preventing them from moving or taking any action.
The Pardon: Lynn struck a deal with Asaga during the six-year Time Skip 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.
Polar Opposite Twins: Unlike Nice Girl Chigara, she's harsh, manipulative, and a little unhinged.
Promoted to Playable: She becomes a playable Ryder pilot in Sunrider 4, taking Chigara's place on the roster.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: 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 Stunned Silence, 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. As later events show, Lynn is completely right.
Reduced Mana Cost: 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.
Replacement Goldfish: She expresses discomfort at the idea of being viewed this way in comparison to Chigara, especially by Kayto.
Rogue Drone: By The Captain's Return, Lynn has deliberately cut herself off from the Prototypes' Hive Mind. She saw the madness that was starting to take hold of the Mindstream after 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.
Squishy Wizard: 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 Status Effects, provide area-of-effect damage or healing, and protect allies from laser weapons with its shield generators.
Tragic Villain: 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.
Twin Switch: In the Academy spinoff, Lynn makes a bet with Chigara that Kayto can only tell them apart through their Identical Twin ID Tag. Chigara takes the bet and the two swap places, with Lynn being proven correct. However, Lynn takes advantage of the situation by having sex with Kayto and then triumphantly revealing the deception afterwards to ruin his romance with Chigara, leaving Kayto horrified and Chigara heartbroken.
The Unfavorite: In Academy her jealousy and anger issues stem from her parents cloning her to create Chigara and then neglecting her.
Villainous Rescue: She saves Kayto at the end of Liberation Day by dragging him to an escape pod before the Sunrider rams the Machiavelli Actual.
Villains Never Lie: 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.
Walking Spoiler: Being Chigara’s ”sister”, her existence spoils Chigara’s true nature.
Yandere: Exhibits this towards Kayto in Academy. She doesn’t kill anyone, but is disturbingly intent on stealing him away from Chigara.
You Are Number 6: Prototype L7NN. Kayto ends up giving her the name "Lynn" during his first interrogation of her because it’s less of a mouthful.

Alpha Prototype

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/7cf7b543_6f7b_479a_9d40_0dcc685a97ca.png

The speaker for the Prototypes. When Alpha was created, she spontaneously generated a Hive Mind, 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.

Big Bad Duumvirate: Her machinations form the crux of the series' plot, but she leaves the heavy lifting to Alice and Claude. Unfortunately, neither of them really share her goals.
Captured Super-Entity: The secret ending of Sunrider 4 shows that she's being held captive in a hidden PACT facility.
Didn't See That Coming: She failed to realize how all-consuming her sister's hatred of humanity was, causing her plans to fall apart.
Elegant Gothic Lolita: Claude even asks her to see Shields herself as "the Sunrider needs more lolitas."
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: She clearly cares for her "sister" Alice and is concerned for her well-being, though this blinds her to Alice's true goals.
Hive Queen: She is the originator of the Prototypes' Hive Mind and directs their actions in accordance with her plans.
Man Behind the Man/Shadow Dictator: She’s this to Arcadius/Alice and Claude, 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.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: So you entrusted The Dragon 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.
Non-Action Big Bad: 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 on the inside.
Walking Spoiler: Her existence spoils the existence of the Prototypes.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: Her desire to control humanity is so the Prototypes can save them from a certain doom. Said doom is the corruption of the Hive Mind (by Alice, though she didn’t know at the time) and Crow Harbor’s incoming Ebon Fleet.
What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: 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.

Omega

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.

Blade Below the Shoulder: 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.
Fan Disservice: 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.
Hive Queen: She has taken Alpha's place as the controller and director of the Mindstream.
I Want Them Alive!: 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.
Know When to Fold 'Em: Once Kayto turns the World Fountain into a star, she recognizes that the battle is a lost cause and orders a withdrawal.
Large and in Charge: 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.
Mental Fusion: She describes herself as the combination of Chigara and Alice's minds.
Obviously Evil: She's a literal monster with Horns of Villainy, Hellish Pupils and a mouth full of sharp teeth, and she has the limbs of a giant spider in place of human arms or legs. A good guy, she is not.
Title Drop: 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!
Villainous Rescue: She rocks up in her dreadnought, the Cathedral, to rescue Kayto from a PACT prison. Her intentions for him are less than altruistic.
We Can Rule Together: 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.
We Have Reserves: 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.
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.

The Aberrant Prototype

Chigara?

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.

Ace Custom: She pilots the Widow, a souped-up Prototype Ryder with a powerful kinetic weapon, bladed attack drones, and nanomachines for rapid battlefield repair.
Anti-Debuff: In the final boss fight, the Widow automatically cures itself of all status effects at the start of her side's phase.
Auto-Revive: 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.
Dark Is Evil: 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.
Duel Boss: She squares off against Asaga in a one-on-one duel.
Explaining Your Powers to the Enemy: She taunts Asaga by revealing that her Ryder has a self-repairing nanomachine hull, letting it undo whatever damage Asaga can inflict.
Healing Factor: 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.
Hurl It into the Sun: She meets her end when Asaga slashes through the Widow, sending it straight into the newborn star that was the White Fountain.
Master of the Levitating Blades: The Widow's "melee" attack consists of deploying swordlike attack drones which swarm around its target to slash it repeatedly.
My Name Is ???: The text boxes always list her name as "Chigara?".
My Rules Are Not Your Rules: 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.
Post-Final Boss: 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.
Villainous Rescue: 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.
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.

SPOILER CHARACTERS

Spoiler Character

Crow Harbor

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/512f0b57_2984_4fdb_b1e6_f5b46788d950.jpeg

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.

Achilles' Heel: He and his soldiers don't have any kinetic weaponry, making him almost totally helpless against a fully-powered shield.
Animal Motifs: His name is Crow and he wears a large bird skull on his left shoulder. Do the math.
Bastard Bastard: 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, and he definitely plunged the galaxy into a civil war in order to grab the throne.
Black Eyes of Crazy: 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.
The Cameo: He appears in the intro to Academy curb-stomping Kayto. Good thing it’s just a hologame Kayto was playing.
Combat Tentacles: He's sporting a set of eight Doctor Octopus-like mechanical tentacles by the time he finally appears in Sunrider 4.
The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: 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.
Contractual Boss Immunity: Completely immune to all status effects - a rarity for this game.
Conqueror from the Future: Inverted. He's a conqueror from the technologically-advanced past.
Disc-One Final Boss: 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.
The Evil Prince: 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.
Evil Uncle: To Sola, as they were on opposite sides of a civil war and she was leading her father’s armies against him.
Fantastic Racism: He previously waged his civil war to eliminate the "low bloods" from the Ryuvian bloodline, Sola included.
Foreshadowing: He was mentioned several times as being the one to lead the Fallen, rebel forces who tried to seize the throne.
Greater-Scope Villain: 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 Reality-Breaking Paradox. He’s even the reason for the Big Bad Duumvirate’s scheme; his actions indirectly led to the event that would cause Alice’s hatred of humanity, 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 Claude was working with the Prototypes because she thought they had the best chance of helping her resolve the paradox of Crow’s presence.
No-Sell: His dreadnought has maxed-out shields which cannot be shut off due to his Contractual Boss Immunity, making him completely impervious to laser and pulse weapons.
Obviously Evil: 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 Black Eyes of Crazy. 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.
Oh, Crap!: 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.
Outside-Context Problem: 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.
Time Travel: 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.
Worf Had the Flu: 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 Psycho Serum, 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.
You Have No Chance to Survive: 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".

Characters / Sunrider

Sunrider Crew

Voiced by: Jonathan Michael Cooke (EN)

Voiced by: Amber Lee Connors (EN); Kisumi Aoi (JP, Liberation Day), Maki Tomonaga (credited as Himari) (JP, The Captain's Return)

Ryder Pilots

Voiced by: Kira Buckland (EN), Sakura Matsuri (JP)

Voiced by: Mary Morgan (EN), Yomogi Kasumi (JP)

Voiced by:Jill Harris (EN), Hayase Yayoi (JP)

Voiced by: Aimee Smith (EN), Haruna Ren (JP)

Voiced by: Sydney P. (EN), Murasaki Nina (JP, Liberation Day), Ayane Mako (JP, The Captain's Return)

Voiced by:Cayla Martin (EN), Yumeno Usagi (JP)

Voiced by: Tina Kim (EN), Nakase Hina (JP, Liberation Day), Mami Yahiro (JP, The Captain's Return)

Cera

Solar Alliance

People's Alliance For Common Treatment

Voiced by: Nakase Hina (JP)

The Prototypes

Chigara?

SPOILER CHARACTERS

Crow Harbor

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Index

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Characters / Sunrider

Edit Locked

Sunrider Crew

Voiced by: Jonathan Michael Cooke (EN)

Voiced by: Amber Lee Connors (EN); Kisumi Aoi (JP, Liberation Day), Maki Tomonaga (credited as Himari) (JP, The Captain's Return)

Ryder Pilots

Voiced by: Kira Buckland (EN), Sakura Matsuri (JP)

Voiced by: Mary Morgan (EN), Yomogi Kasumi (JP)

Voiced by:Jill Harris (EN), Hayase Yayoi (JP)

Voiced by: Aimee Smith (EN), Haruna Ren (JP)

Voiced by: Sydney P. (EN), Murasaki Nina (JP, Liberation Day), Ayane Mako (JP, The Captain's Return)

Voiced by:Cayla Martin (EN), Yumeno Usagi (JP)

Voiced by: Tina Kim (EN), Nakase Hina (JP, Liberation Day), Mami Yahiro (JP, The Captain's Return)

Cera

Solar Alliance

People's Alliance For Common Treatment

Voiced by: Nakase Hina (JP)

The Prototypes

Chigara?

SPOILER CHARACTERS

Crow Harbor

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Index

Next