Nightmare Fuel / Fuga: Melodies of Steel

Happy children go in…

The Soul Cannon is an ultimate weapon that can annihilate all enemies with the resolve of a single child.
Do you wish to use it?

Let's cut to the chase: this is not the same Adventure-Friendly World seen in Tail Concerto and Solatorobo: Red the Hunter. The setting of Fuga: Melodies of Steel is a war-torn wasteland deliberately and blatantly inspired by Nazi-occupied France, and the main playable cast are children forced to take up arms. And then there's the core gimmick the game is based around, which can best be described as War Is Hell directly translated into a gameplay mechanic— if things ever go too far south, one of the kids has to die.

This is a Moments page, so all spoilers are unmarked per wiki policy. You Have Been Warned.

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• The entire existence of the Soul Cannon. A single massive weapon grafted on the side of the Taranis, powerful enough to decimate an entire platoon in one shot, made available in a crisis situation with only one itty-bitty catch: one of the children must give up their own life to provide it the needed energy to fire.
  • The chamber itself has a rather unnerving design, too. On the outside, it looks like a mix between a boiler oven and a coffin. On the inside, it looks like a mix between a boiler oven and an electric chair.
  • Here's the process of how a sacrifice happens in-game. After the child is selected, the game moves to a shot of the Soul Cannon Chamber area, before transitioning to a shot of the chamber door itself, with a plethora of indiscernible whisper-like noises being heard once it finally opens (as shown above). The camera takes a few steps forward and the door slams shut. Soon, the camera shakes as humming and whirring sounds occur, and the chamber flashes with blinding light from within as an eldritch screech plays. Finally, sickly violet energy flows out of the chamber, the Soul Cannon comes to life and assembles itself, and the resulting energy blast takes up the entire height of the screen. And nothing is left of the child afterwards aside from the trinket they left behind.
    • A popular theory regarding these strange whisper noises is that they happen to be the distorted screams of past sacrifices.
  • It's not made entirely clear just how powerful the Soul Cannon's blast of energy is, but Malt describes it in the tutorial as making the forest around them "messed up", and it's already an "I win" option that ends every boss fight early. On that note, remember how the game establishes in its first chapter that some Berman soldiers can escape their tanks and survive fights with the Taranis if they're ever so lucky, and most boss fights normally end with the soldiers rushing to do this. If you use the Soul Cannon, on the other hand:
    Berman soldier piloting the Lorelei: (yelling) W-withdraw! Withdr—

• Even if Flam Kish is somewhat sympathetic (or at least pitiful) given that the children of the Taranis killed her father Colonel Pretzel in combat, this aspect of her is balanced out by how much she detests everyone and everything outside of her home country, having been someone completely indoctrinated into the Berman Empire's jingoistic ideology. And when Jin calls her out on coldly killing his father for dissent despite her own grudge against the Taranis crew, she makes it completely clear that she doesn't care:
  Flam: It's presumptuous to compare us chosen people of Berman with worthless trash like you! (chuckles) You should rather feel honored that this filthy factory served our grand purpose...
  • Even if Flam herself isn't that scary to an adult player, her brief Villainous Breakdown following her first fight is very discomforting to watch:
    Flam: (unhinged) Kill me! Kill me, like you killed my father!
  • And then there's her Rasputinian Death following her rematch. Barely holding onto composure and having been subject to a humiliating defeat again, Flam escapes her collapsing tank and prepared to fight the Taranis with just a regular gun… and then the wreckage of her tank explodes, engulfing her in flames that are described as eating her alive as she screams in agony. While we are spared this horrific image, the children on the Taranis are not.

• Doktor Blutwurst is one of the key scientists of the Berman Imperial Army, and plays one of the most important roles in the Berman invasion of Gasco through rounding up Mau's spell-casting Felineko into an Auschwitz-like concentration camp and subjecting them to a Life Drain to fuel "Bio-Batteries". While Hax merely treats these experiments as a means to an end for his greater plans, Blutwurst is instead a psychological tire fire of a Mad Scientist who relishes in the prospect of causing suffering and death among the Felineko. It's no wonder that he's the first adversary that the children have no issue with killing outright.
  Blutwurst: Every scientific advancement demands a sacrifice! (laughing hysterically) On the contrary, it is not a sacrifice— it is an honor for them!
  • Blutwurst is so bad that even the Radio Woman speaks up and begs the children to take him out:
    Radio Woman: My children, this man is a monster! You must put an end to his experiments at any cost!
  • Britz was serving under this man prior to his defection. Think about that.
  • As described above, Berman soldiers will usually react to the Soul Cannon with appropriate shock and horror, be they mere grunts or seasoned officers like Von Baum, Von Stollen and Flam Kish to a lesser extent. If the Soul Cannon is used to defeat Blutwurst, however, he looks upon its destructive power with awe, potentially nullifying any possible catharsis the player would obtain from using it:
    Blutwurst: Wh-what glorious energy!! It even… exceeds all of my research!?

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