Suzaku

The Raven = Axl plot threads seem like they may be irrelevant, since when Ishiwatari was asked about it, he didn't recall there being any connection (though, he didn't come out and deny it either, so you never know). Raven's backstory doesn't really mesh with Axl's. They even have different birthdays and blood types. I'm not sure exactly how Raven's backstory goes, not being able to really read the short story, but I know he calls Heaven "Valhalla", and according to what I've scrounged up on some Japanese sites, he was a mercenary sent to the front lines of a battle in medieval Germany. I'm not sure if that means he was a pagan during the middle ages, if he was an immortal Norseman who ended up in Germany, or what. Of course, it's interesting to note that ravens were often used to symbolize Odin, who was missing his right eye, due to the two ravens Huginn and Muginn (Thought and Memory) who kept him informed of all the details of the world. Raven, of course, has a white light glowing from where his right eye should be... Of course, I don't know that Ishiwatari puts that much thought into his characters.

Don't feel too bad, even a friend of mine who works as a professional translator was unwilling to tackle just one short story -- his response was something like, "That's not a short story." True enough, there's actually about 70-80 novel-size pages worth of text between all the stories. If I had the time (I don't) or a digital transcript (ditto) I might just be able to plow through it inspite of my fairly limited translation skills and produce something. Good luck to anyone willing to take on the task. Would you mind terribly uploading the design work for Raven and That Man? Other characters and Servants in general would be nice, too. I know stuff has been scanned from the Dengeki Maoh Feb '08 Character File and the Complete Guide, but I get the feeling they kept some stuff under wraps to sell the big book.

Most of the matches I've seen, if he wins, he does so with like 1/5th of his health left. He's described as a "high risk, high reward" character on the Japanese wiki.

Just a note, the name for those attacks is actually "Astral Heat", according to the new Arcadia. From what little I've read about his strategy so far, it seems that it's important to make effective use of his command moves and his Drive and make sure not to whiff specials and, especially, Distortion Drives, because his guage system limits your opportunities to use them. Which is pretty obvious, I suppose.

http://www.dustloop.com/forums/showpost.php?p=333064&postcount=1119 A little late to the party, but there's direct translations of all his stuff from Arcadia including translations for his attack names for people who care.

Yeah, can't find anything about it, though, apart from the name being tentative and that it's being published by Enterbrain. Hm.

Order-Sol. Has also been translated as Storm and Strom.

It's written by the same writer who did the novels and the story modes, and I don't think there's anything in it that contradicts the story as a whole, so I don't think there's any reason to think it's non-canon. It's also got early appearances by the PWAB, I-No in a single panel, and a photograph of Frederick, That Man, and Aria, so stuff in the manga was revisted later, to varying degrees.

Well, in the interview, Ishiwatari talks about how there have been youkai all through the history of the Earth, and that just continues up through GG. And, of course, in the games, you have vampires and ghosts and things, not to mention the stuff you can see in backgrounds of the stages. Then there's also robots, at least one homonculi, and a whole bunch of other insanity. I believe that at least some of Faust's abilities are implied to be the result of self-surgery, for example, in Lightning the Argent, he offers to perform a surgery on Ky that would let him turn his head a full 360 degrees, like he can. As for the relationship between Fred, Aria, and That Man. I'm pretty sure That Man says that he and Fred killed Aria, either figuratively or literally. Fred and That Man were also supposed to be very close, and from what I can gather, it's probably more likely that when That Man witnessed "God's Merciless Revelation", he set the Gear Project into motion in order to prepare for it, since all through the series he's talking about how the humans and Gears will need to cooperate in order to face the future disaster. Since Valentine is supposed to be from "God's Merciless Revelation", I wonder if that's also where Raven is from? It would certainly help explain why he and Valentine share the same Tribe.

I'm not sure if it even really matters. Lots of Gears were human to begin with, including Sol and Testament. If you have Gear Cells, you've got Gear Cells, and I don't really think there's been anything of consequence to indicate that crossbreeding dilutes it.

Thanks, you got all of that information ordered and sorted very nicely. Regarding Solaria being a "converted Gear" and Marina being a human: While Gears can be created, the Blackard company was specifically using Justice as their model, and Justice was converted into a Gear from a human woman. The Priest speculated that they were raising Marina to become their Command-type Gear, so I imagine that Solaria is probably her younger sister, but, unlike Marina, was actually put through the Gear conversion process. With Marina having been "rescued" from that fate before being converted into a Gear, she's just a normal human. The reason her legs turn into tentacle things is purely because she took the medicine developed by the Blackard Company (Vitae, I believe), not because she had Gear Cells or anything like that. I can't remember if it was already mentioned in this thread, but the medicine cured people by spreading Gear Cells to their injuries/diseases/whatever, granting them the regenerative properties that Gears have. The sound of Solaria's singing caused the cells to go berserk, mutate, and kill the "patients", presumably a result of her being an experiment to create a Command-type Gear.

They've already developed the game (I'm sure there are tens of thousands of copies floating around in bargain bins in Japan), and I'm sure it won't cost much money to set up some demo stations or a repeating trailer at their TGS booth for the sake of promotion. It's also not like Arcsy has a hell of a lot to promote at TGS. This is a pretty common practice for TGS, lots of companies promote old games, sometimes games that are well over a year old. Fact is, that with the 360 gaining some momentum, setting up a few TVs and DVD players or a couple 360s to play the game on isn't going to make Arcsy go broke.

I think they *might* be planning to release a new version in Japan, or a DLC patch, at any rate. They were sorta promoting the English version on the Japanese website (release date, pricing, voice samples, trailers), and I guess they must've indicated that it would work in both North American and Japanse consoles, because they recently had to issue a notice that the English version wouldn't work on Japanese 360s. Not sure if that means they'd be adding actual extra features, or they'll maybe just include the English voice acting or set it up so people in Japan and the US can compete online. And of course, they might not be doing anything at all. It's not so weird to show off old games at game shows, especially when they didn't sell too well, and not many new games are being developed.

I want to say that Kyrie must be fan-created, because I've never heard of (her?). Saying Marina "exhibited gear-like behavior" is a bit of an understatement, hehe. As I recall, her legs literally exploded into writhing tentacles that Ky had to hack apart, then formed a face that looked like Marina and melted due to the damage. Marina was found on the doorstep of a church clutched by a dead woman bearing the Sigil of Justice. The priest assumed that the Blackard Company was trying to raise her to transform her into a Command Type Gear. I'm not really sure on the exact details regarding her connection with Solaria except that Solaria looks nearly identical, except younger, and *might* be her "sister". Solaria is a sentient (presumably Command-Type) Gear. She sang, and I think (not sure) that her voice (or the sound of her voice) is what triggered the Gear Cells in the various villagers to go crazy and kill them, and also what woke up the Megadeath-class gear. Raven's on the scene in the book to recover a sample of the resonance for That Man, and to warn Sol that he should keep away from the source of the resonance. Sol eventually finds her and ditches her with Ky, and she's taken under the protection of Interpol. I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure Solaria has no bounty, because the PWAB don't know she exists. Again, could be wrong. Solaria also doesn't look nearly as much like the Maiden of the Grove as I originally though, at least not in the concept art, where her ears don't appear elfish at all. *shrug*

No, no, trust me. I've got about as much interest in trolling on a board I've been happily visiting for three years as I've got with arguing with a stranger on a street corner (which is to say, no interest at all). I'm not speculating, just laying out the facts. You can make your own informed decisions, and I'll make mine. The Maiden of the Grove has wings, ribbons, a connection with Ky, Gear Cells which resemble those of Justice, is speculated by an in-game character to be her backup, and was stated by Ishiwatari to be about 8-years-old. None of that is speculation. I do have to stop you there. The Japanese language may be intentionally vague, sometimes maddeningly so, but, generally speaking, it isn't intentionally misleading. It's all about subtraction (not misdirection): you want to get your point across with as few "clues" as possible, not completely obstruct your point. Anyway, any requests for which short story you want translated most? I'll be doing Raven's, then That Man's, but after that, I don't have any preferance. It might take me a while to get done (might call in a few favors and get some friends to help), so I'd rather focus on the stuff that people are most interested in first.

Well, there's also the fact that her Gear Cells closely resemble those of Justice, Paradigm speculates that she is a backup of Justice, and in an interview, Ishiwatari said she was about 8 years old. Justice is her mother, Dizzy was 3 in the X series, and GG2 is set 5 years later, so-- Oh, wait, sorry. I forgot common sense doesn't count for anything here. If something isn't explicitly stated, you have to walk around pretending to be oblivious. My apologies!

I'm pretty sure there's no question that she's Dizzy, since they're officially translating her name as "Maiden of the Grove" for the English release.

Scan the interview and the short story text, when you get a chance. I'll get to work on making sense out of it right away. Also: Thanks! 1. Because Valentine . 2. Because he is. 3. They always were. Aria , and they both worked with him during the Gear Project. 4. Because he's a kid? 5. Because Ky's wife is the Maiden of the Grove. 6. Buh?

Yeah, a quick glance at some Japanese blogs/forums gave me a very basic understanding of what was in the book, but unforunately, nobody has posted much in the way of details, and it's hard to guage what's just theory or fanfiction ideas.

Oh, I desperately want scans. Sounds familiar.

Actually, you can thank Ed/Skuld for the spreading of that rumor. He listened to/watched the interview and, apparantly didn't know what gaiden means or misunderstood or was just waiting for an excuse to bitch, and posted up a rant on his LJ about how X and XX weren't canon all of a sudden. Which simply was never the case. I went back and read the interview and Ishiwatari calls them "gaiden", sidestories that are canon but not directly related to the main plotline.

From everything I've heard and seen about the game, it doesn't really play anything like Dynasty Warriors. Even Ishiwatari says it's more like Warcraft than Dynasty Warriors. It's closer to an RTS game, and he specifically points out WC3:TFT's Defense of the Ancients mod as a comparison.

Pretty good interview. Another source confirming that GGX and GGXX are canon isn't a bad thing, either.

Not sure, the PDF manual actually ONLY refers to the poses.

I much prefer Onion Knight's specials, which actually temporarily shift the battle into a turn-based, menu-driven fight, complete with stepping back and forward while the enemy, large and on the left side of the screen, takes on a still pose.