Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis/YMMV


 * Crowning Moment of Awesome:
 * Also, the battle against the Great Beast in Chapter 5, where Vayne unlocks both the Variable Strike and Finishing Burst.
 * Crowning Moment of Funny: Everywhere. One that sticks to mind is Flay's attempt to stage a kidnapping. The only one who seems to be trying to act is probably Flay himself.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: A fair amount of the battle themes; notably Nefertiti.
 * Fan Preferred Couple:
 * Freud Was Right: Nikki's weapon.
 * Fridge Brilliance: Of course students are allowed to heavily customize their uniforms. It's an alchemy school. Modifying things to make them more effective is important enough to be a game mechanic.
 * The  very nicely deconstructs The Quiet One/The Aloner, as a Be Careful What You Wish For aesop. How would the wish to be left alone logically be carried out?
 * Fridge Logic: Flay is a Senior, and that apparently allows the True Companions to venture the Mana Ruins - Interior Heights. So, why not include the God's Scar and Clocktower into the list?
 * So
 * Goddamned Bats: Everything becomes a Goddamned Bat at night. And the Demonic Spiders become even more demonic.
 * Ho Yay/Foe Yay: Depending on how you look at Roxis and Vayne's interactions...
 * For the matter, Flay's final character quest. Hoorah, lots of cheesy "gotta save my friend from the Secret Evil Order (hiring names)" goodness.
 * Muppy kinda makes it semi-canon? Of course, Muppy can reproduce asexually, so maybe gender doesn't really matter for his species, but still, offering the position of "his Queen" to Vayne...
 * There's also Roxis's eagerness to put a "collar" on Vayne... I repeat; not Sulpher, but Vayne...
 * Regardless of the fact that Vayne can potentially end up with anyone in the True Companions, members of said group seem to have a fondness of citing his interests towards another character (Jess, in her second-to-last and final Character Quests, for example). Or... lack thereof, in Pamela's case. "This is Vayne we're talking about; that's impossible!~"
 * Like You Would Really Do It: Like anyone would die. Really. Really, there's no sarcasm in this statement.
 * Magnificent Bastard: Arguably Flay.
 * Tear Jerker: Bad ending. Music doesn't help.
 * They Changed It Now It Sucks: A fairly-often heard call from some parts of the fandom concerning changes to some names in the English version, specifically Philomel Hartung to Jessica Philomel, and Gunnar Damm to Flay Gunnar. Others argue that these are Woolseyisms, of course, as the reasons for the changes are obvious; "Philomel"'s name was shortened to "Philo" (or "Phil", if you like) in the original version which leads to rather obvious problems, and NIS America probably didn't want a character to sound like he had a curseword for a last name. Some fans just can't be satisfied with any change, however.
 * It has to be granted that this is exacerbated a little if you play with the Japanese audio on; since NIS America didn't have the time, money or manpower to re-record any Japanese dialogue, the unedited names still show up, leading to a little bit of annoying dissonance between the text and the speech. This can simply be solved by not using Japanese audio or turning the event audio off completely, though.
 * The above two are the most often-cited examples, but other characters went through technical changes compared to the initial published English names Gust gave the characters - but these are even less complained about because the Woolseyizing is even more obvious. Anna's last name was "changed" to Lemouri to match the katakana of her name (レムリ); the given spelling in Japanese materials is "Laemmle", but that doesn't even match the katakana (it'd be pronounced similarly to "ray-me" with that spelling). Nikki was originally "Titil Mimi Nike Mele", but she was always called ニケ; this is very close in pronunciation to "Nikki" so any change to her full name is essentially semantic. Most other changes are in line with this - not the exact spelling that Gust initially printed, but often so close yet subtly cleaned up for an English reader that any argument really becomes semantic.
 * Some aspects of the localization are just plain bad, though. Skills are mistranslated and/or translated inconsistently. (Why does Shade Shift become Jade Shift in battle?) Some liberties were taken with the dialog in places, occasionally leading to awkward or out of character phrasing. ("Your blind allegiance will be your undoing?" That sounds like something Flay might say, not Vayne. The original line was just "Why are you doing this?") Grammatical errors abound. And so on.
 * Ship Tease: Vayne with...well, anyone whose character quest you completed, especially Nikki, which was very explicit in showing them getting together. There's also Nikki and Roxis, Roxis and Pamela (this was shot down and used for a very funny scene), and Flay and Anna, if you squint hard enough and maybe turn your head a little...Even Muppy gets in on the action by making Vayne his queen if you follow his route to the end.
 * That One Boss: The second round against the blue-haired teacher. She basically spam activates a thunder attack that puts alot of cards on the battle sequence, clogging up your moves, and does a two round mass-kill attack, unless you can block it, or use defensive supports. You need a ton of mass revive items, and even then, you'd probably still die.
 * Goddamned Boss: ZweisMunde (literally "two worlds") is actually a fun boss, but really loves to use Interface Screw attacks. One of them turns all your healing echo (and other multi-card techs) into its own multi-card attacks. Another one swaps out your entire team.
 * The Scrappy: Tony. The guy is your typical stuck up asshole who has a grudge against the protagonists. His only redeeming quality is that he's so pathetic it's funny and that he's a threat in boss fights.
 * Goddamned Boss: ZweisMunde (literally "two worlds") is actually a fun boss, but really loves to use Interface Screw attacks. One of them turns all your healing echo (and other multi-card techs) into its own multi-card attacks. Another one swaps out your entire team.
 * The Scrappy: Tony. The guy is your typical stuck up asshole who has a grudge against the protagonists. His only redeeming quality is that he's so pathetic it's funny and that he's a threat in boss fights.