Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica: Difference between revisions

''Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica,'' or ''Ar tonelico II: Sekai ni Hibiku Shoujo-tachi no Metafalica'' (''The Girls' Metafalica that Resounds throughout the World,'' with Metafalica meaning "Song of Creation"), is, obviously enough, the second game in the ''[[Ar tonelico]]'' series.

 

 

Protagonist Croix Bartel, a knight of the Grand Bell, is regularly tasked with stopping the harm done by those afflicted. It is while on a mission to contain one such outbreak that Croix, together with his adopted sister Cocona, is put in quite a different situation. The Holy Maiden Cloche, the Reyvateil who leads the Grand Bell in the war, has come under attack by the Sacred Army. He is soon entrusted with protecting her while they escape. While attempting to hide from the Sacred Army, they encounter Luca, another Reyvateil who has known Croix since childhood.

A [[Manga]] adaptation exists.

 

 

Being as this is the page for the second installment, more general series tropes go on the ''[[Ar tonelico]]'' page.

* [[Absolute Cleavage]]: {{spoiler|Part of Misha's [[Spy Catsuit]] in Frelia's binary sphere.}}

* [[A God Am I]]: {{spoiler|Infel and Nenesha claim to be the world's new Goddesses at the end of the game.}}

* [[Alien Sky]]: There's two moons, one with rings, and the sky itself occasionally has an artificial-looking ring visible in it. The rings are actually part of the tower, however, instead of something surrounding the planet.

* [[All There in the Manual]]: The settei book goes into certain details regarding character histories and more of how the plot came to happen, etc.

* [[Amazing Technicolor Battlefield]]: Lots of them. But they're a bit subverted, as you're the one who activates this through Synchronity Chain and Cloche's Replekia.

* [[Amplifier Artifact]]: Dualithnode crystals.

* [[Anime Hair]]: Alfman has what can only be described as ''gravity-defying'' hair.

* {{spoiler|[[Assimilation Plot]]: Attempted twice; first with Hibernation, second with Sublimation.}}

* [[The Atoner]]: {{spoiler|Jacqli/Mir is this, particularly if you take her path. If you don't, she likes to pretend she's not... but she still is.}}

* [[Badass Adorable]]: Cocona. She's about ten years old or so, four-foot-nothing, wears her long hair in pigtails with two absurdly large hair ornaments, and is the main character's adopted little sister. She is a very cheery girl who is always willing to help her big brother and often pouts in the cutest way whenever he's late. Turns out that she accompanies her "big brother" on his knight missions, and fights by taking her hair ornaments off and using them as a sort of transforming baton weapon. Despite her size, she keeps up with the adult frontline fighters, including her older brother. And the kicker? {{spoiler|She is a Reyvateil, a species that is usually kept in the back lines far away from the physical fighting.}}

* [[Bare Your Midriff]]: Luca's standard costume, Cocona, and {{spoiler|Jacqli}}'s Long Skirt costume.

* [[Barrier Maiden]]: {{spoiler|The goddess Frelia certainly qualifies, as her support is required to keep all of Metafalss afloat above the Sea of Death.}}

* [[Berserk Button]]: {{spoiler|Jacqli is revealed to have one in a radio drama. When Spica gets hurt when they're doing some antics, she goes nuts. She doesn't go back to [[Kill All Humans]] but she does get pissed.}}

* [[Big Badass Wolf]]: Shun.

* [[Blind Idiot Translation]]: This is becoming far more apparent now that a bunch of outraged fans have taken it upon themselves to retranslate ''Metafalica''. Certain characters just come off completely wrong due to NISA not translating things properly or just not putting in the effort to wrangle Japanese puns into something that makes sense in English.

** The concept of I.P.D. is simply a breakdown of cute girls who more or less get sent into some kind of prison/therapy/mistreatment just like how it's shown in the [[What the Hell, Hero?|prologue, demonstated by Croix himself]], and what happens to {{spoiler|Cocona}} when {{spoiler|she goes berserk.}}

* [[Broken Bird]]: {{spoiler|Jacqli, who actually uses the imagery of a bird as a metaphor for herself in her songs.}}

* [[Bunny Ears Lawyer]]: Cloche, a Maiden, just loves her some Gergo products.

** {{spoiler|Jacqli's hobby? Writing scripts. And let's just same some of the stuff she writes is...[[Magical Girl|''not'' what you'd expect]] from the local [[Deadpan Snarker]].}}

* [[Cat Fight]]: Luca and Cloche twice. The first time is a [[Crowning Moment of Funny]], but the second one is played much more seriously, with both of them dropping [["The Reason You Suck" Speech|reasons the other sucks]] like bombs.

* [[Came Back Wrong]]: {{spoiler|Nenesha. Specifically as a Type 2, as her body was destroyed by Raki and only her Heart of Gaea from the failed attempt at Metafalica remained.}}

* [[Chained by Fashion]]: Cloche's Victim Pain costume.

* [[The Chosen One]]: Cloche, the Holy Maiden. {{spoiler|Or so they think. She ''is'' still a maiden - just a different type. The second chosen one is Luca, the real Holy Maiden.}}

** {{spoiler|Gorgo/Nenesha and Infel, who are introduced as Mind Guardians and become the final villains.}}

** {{spoiler|Amarie, whose introduced as a mysterious follower and becomes a party member.}}

** Cocona has something like 4 inch tall platform shoes.

* [[Combined Energy Attack]]: Repalica channels the power of singing I.P.D.s to amplify the power of Cloche's song magic.

* [[Combination Attack]]: Synchronity Chains.

* [[Continuity Nod]]: {{spoiler|Frelia's Binary Field has three rather familiar Reyvateils playing roles in the Syndicate.}}

* [[Defeat Means Friendship]]: {{spoiler|Mir, defeated in the first game, returns as an (eventual) love interest in the form of Jacqli.}}

* [[Demoted to Extra]]: Luca gets the short end of the stick in Frelia's Binary Field story, showing up once with little plot relevance. She lampshades this in a talk. Same goes for both Luca and Cloche in Jacqli's Cosmosphere story as they're playing the "heroines of justice" bit but end up getting shafted because the story is centered on the [[Dark Magical Girl]].

* [[Detached Sleeves]]: Luca.

* [[Damsel in Distress]]: Every Reyvateil except for {{spoiler|Jacqli}}, at some point or another.

* [[Dojikko]]: Jacqli has a bizarre version: while she is only show to slip up in battle, she can do so ''in a floating mech'', which will fall flat on its face.

* [[The Dragon]]: Oh, Raki. Th enforcer for the [[Big Bad]].

* {{spoiler|[[The End of the World as We Know It]]: It ''nearly'' happens three times. First, there's the threat of Frelia more or less running out of power to keep the Rim afloat (and she does for part of it). Second, there's [[Assimilation Plot|what would have happened]] if Hibernation had been successful, and third, the similar Sublimation, which would affect the entire world instead of just Metafalss.}}

** {{spoiler|It also happened off screen before the game begins. Supplemental material reveals that Sol Marta doesn't have enough juice to keep the rim up by itself with Ar tonelico shut down. This means that the Rim that we see during the second game is what's left after Frelia was forced to let most of it drop after [[The Magic Goes Away]]. Fortunately, it came back in time that she didn't have to let it all go.}}

* [[Freaky Friday Flip]]: Close-but-not-quite; while no actual body-swapping occurs, the one level of the Infelsphere (forcibly) has Luca and Cloche see how each other had to live by having one of them "reenact" certain events of the girl's life. Whose past gets seen depends on which route Croix takes.

* [[Gag Boobs]]: Taking a bath finally showed {{spoiler|Jacqli}} "the difference" in size between herself and Cloche.

** At one point, Luca is attempting to find a way for Soope to hide itself from civilians. Luca suggests that it hides in her clothing pretending to be her boobs, with obvious results. The ''actual drawn sprite'' of this alone makes this scene more hilarious than it has any right to be.

* [[Gainax Ending]]: If you chose one of the other girls, Jacqli's Cosmosphere ends this way. Gets even funnier when Jacqli basically tells you afterwards [[Shrug of God|I have no bloody clue. Fanwank something.]]

* [[Heterosexual Life Partners]]: {{spoiler|Cloche and Luca, particularly on the Cocona and Jacqli endings.}}

* [[High Altitude Battle]]: {{spoiler|The final battle against Infel and Nenesha takes place in a satellite.}}

* [[Hot Chick with a Sword]]: Cloche has a sword (in both her standard and Oldmodern Style costumes), though she doesn't really use it. {{spoiler|Save for her [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]].}}

* [[Housewife]]: Cloche and Luca fight over would be the better house wife in the Infelsphere. Presumably Reisha pre-series.

* [[Japanese Delinquents]]: {{spoiler|Jacqli}}'s Long Skirt costume draws on the "sukeban" style of female Japanese delinquents.

* [[Kill Sat]]: This is amongst Jacqli's power. Luca's final Song Magic may also count, as Sol Marta (Metafalss' server) itself is used as such. And of course, Cloche has Replekia and Infel Phira...

* [[Large Ham]]: Cloche, in battle.

{{quote|'''Cloche: FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION!'''

* [[Little Miss Badass]]: Cocona from ''Metafalica'' manages to push this to its limits. Wielding [[Improbable Weapon User|her concealed baton]] and roundhouse kicks, and an occasional magic attack, as her weapons, she not only fights on the front lines, but bodily protects the Reyvateils who are twice her mass and age {{spoiler|in spite of actually BEING a Reyvateil herself}}. Her EX attack involves ''[[Rule of Cool|creating a laser blade from her baton]]''.

* [[Little Miss Snarker]]: {{spoiler|Jacqli. Except that she's [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old|really almost 400 years old]] and thus only looks like a loli, and Croix definitely doesn't see her as a "younger" sister, unlike Cocona.}}

* {{spoiler|[[Living with the Villain]]}}: Done interestingly. {{spoiler|Infel, the [[Big Bad]], poses as Cloche's Mind Guardian.}}

* [[Lost in Translation]]: Infel repeatedly makes [[Incredibly Lame Pun|bad puns]]. However, these were translated literally for the North American release, which turns Croix's [[Collective Groan|responses]] into strange non sequiturs.

* [[Love Makes You Evil]]: {{spoiler|Infel used to be like Cloche but a [[Despair Event Horizon]] pushed her to a darker goal.}}

* [[Luminescent Blush]]: {{spoiler|Jacqli}} gets this surprisingly frequently. Done hilariously at the end of her Cosmosphere. Normally, it involves a "marriage" ceremony with a speech. {{spoiler|Jacqli}} breaks the rules and has {{spoiler|Ayatane}} forgo this because it's embarrassing (whilst blushing), and her "Costume Get" image, normally with a default expression, has her blushing while rolling her eyes. [[Tsundere]] much?

* [[Mayfly-December Romance]]: {{spoiler|Averted for Frelia and Shun. Shun was a human who willingly transformed himself into a digital lifeform to protect Frelia throughout her 700-year lifetime. However, his bio says that he wants to go back to being human.}}

* [[Meido]]: One of {{spoiler|Jacqli}}'s costumes.

* [[Mental World]]: In addition to the Reyvateil's Individual Cosmospheres, there is also the Infelsphere, which is a shared world that Luca and Cloche can enter, though Croix is able to join them with both girls permission at first.

* [[The Mole]]: {{spoiler|Amarie, sort of.}}

* [[More Dakka]]: One of Alfman's attacks reveals a [[Hyperspace Arsenal]], and he unloads.

* [[Musical Theme Naming]]: The Cello and Viola moons.

* [[My God, What Have I Done?]]: [[All There in the Manual|In her backstory]], Infel {{spoiler|gave a particularly cruel yet not entirely underserved [[Calling the Old Man Out]] toward her foster father Grammul, after it's revealed that his plan for Metafalica require her to be sacrificed. Grammul was soon fired from the Metafalica project and then disappeared. What Infel realized later was that Grammul had created an ([[Techno Babble|long story short]]) imperfect replacement for the sacrifice in the form of Mimimi, the doll he gave to Infel long time ago.}}

* [[Nightmare Fetishist]]: Jacqli thinks a giant killer stuffed rabbit is cute (as well as thinking all the "normal" cute things are lame).

* [[Not Blood Siblings]]: {{spoiler|If you do not progress past Level 5 in anyone's cosmosphere in ''Metafalica'', Croix gets paired with Cocona, his adopted sister.}}

* [[The Obi Wrong]]: Leglius is technically Croix's boss at first... but still often takes orders from him after rejoining. Even when Croix is transferred to being directly under Cloche, [[The Woman Wearing the Queenly Mask|a woman very much used to giving orders]], ''she'' takes orders from him, too.

* [[Only Known by Their Nickname]]: {{spoiler|"Jacqli" is actually the name of her mech.}}

* [[Pimped-Out Dress]]: Cloche fits this most.

** Lampshaded when upon her first dualstall scene with Luca, her dress turned out to be so complex that she didn't know how to take it off herself.

* [[Rage Against the Heavens]]: Cloche is the figurehead of this movement.

* [[Rags to Royalty]]: {{spoiler|Luca, given that she's a Maiden.}}

* [[Random Encounters]]: Using the same system as the first one.

* [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old]]: Frelia, {{spoiler|Jacqli}}.

* [[She's a Man In Japan]]: Or rather, he's a woman in Japan. [[Gender Blender Name|Jean]] Ishikawa, one of the characters in Cloche's Cosmosphere and the avatar for one of her song magic spells, was changed to a male in the US localization. This runs into a problem with the associated song magic spell, considering she accidentally cuts off her armor in the attack animation.

* [[Shoddy Knockoff Product]]: A couple in universe examples show up in ''Metafalica''. First there are Funboons, a knockoff of Funbuns from ''Elemia''. Then there's Geugo, a knockoff of Gergo.

* [[Slave Collar]]: Dog collar but it serves a similar purpose. Cloche puts on on Croix in her level 5 as a means to balance her love for him and her public image: nothing wrong with a maiden having a beloved pet, right?

* [[Spell My Name with an "S"]]: Spellings for names were changed between the Japanese and American releases. Some made sense - Croix and Cloche, as opposed to Chroah and Chroche, are based on French words; things like Nenesha as opposed to Nenesya reflect standard romanization schemes - but others notsomuch. {{spoiler|Trulyworth, as opposed to Truelywaath, removes [[Prophetic Names|the Hymmnos symbolism of Luca being the real Holy Maiden]].}} Some spellings were stylized (Lakra and Jacqli) despite the originals (Rakura and Jakuri) being written in kanji. Other names were changed entirely for no apparent reason. This is one of the things that drew criticism for NISA's localization of ''Metafalica''.

** One name that is [[Woolseyism]] is Cynthia. In the artbook, her name is written as ''Sincere''.

** It's made quite clear that one of three things happened: 1) The translator was not provided with a Hymmnos dictionary, 2) The translator was told the players wouldn't have access to an official English-to-Hymmnos dictionary (which is technically true as there isn't an official one), or 3) Both 1 and 2. {{spoiler|Truelywaath}} therefore, would seem MORE lazy to people with passing knowledge of Japanese-to-English translation conventions, despite it being technically accurate in Hymmnos. {{spoiler|Trulyworth}} doesn't lose all of its symbolism, {{spoiler|as she still has her "true worth"}} so it isn't as blatant as, say, Leyka, which loses a bit of the naming scheme since her mother is still spelled Reisha, and not Leysha.

* [[Tall, Dark and Bishoujo|Short Dark And Bishoujo]]: {{spoiler|Jacqli}}.

* [[The Stars Are Going Out]]: {{spoiler|This starts to happen when Infel and Nenesha sing Sublimation.}}

** {{spoiler|Spica is revealed to be this. She gets better, though is eventually revealed to be something of a [[Christmas Cake]] in the process}}

* [[Stocking Filler]]: {{spoiler|Spica}}.

* [[Stripperific]]: Luca and Cloche are more modestly dressed. Then you see Cloche's Armageddon outfit, and all that goes to hell. {{spoiler|Jacqli}} is very much [[Ms. Fanservice]], however, and her clothes (and combat entry) reinforce that.

** Amarie and Lakra fit this well, too, particularly the latter.

* [[Take That]]: While Luca disagrees, Spica takes a shot at [[Moe]]:

{{quote|'''Spica''': Sure it is. Anyone who uses the word "[[Moe]]" is most likely a pervert.}}

* [[This Is a Drill]]: Parodied in one of the synthesis conversations. Croix doesn't really get what makes the drill suit 'manly'.

* [[Timed Mission]]: Well, not really defined ingame as such, but due to a bug in a certain line of code that the translators apparently overlooked in the US release (and, mind you, patchers came up with just a few lines of code that corrected this), the last fight (and the subsequent optional boss battles) against {{spoiler|Raki}} have a time limit of three turns - on the sixth action of the boss (usually the third round), [[Game Breaking Bug|the buffer overload kills the game]] if she has more than 20% of her HP. Otherwise, she merely tries to charge at you. This makes it nigh impossible to win later battles (in which the boss gains more HP and stat buffs) and the [[Last Lousy Point]]. 'Course, there ''are'' legal and not-so-legal methods to get around this. Mercifully, this is corrected in the EU release, though it seems very unlikely that it will ever see resolution in the US.

* [[Trauma-Induced Amnesia]]: {{spoiler|Cloche, given that she was taken from her parents at ''three years old'' and experimented on because she was a high level IPD. Her first memories were of her being told her new name.}}

* [[Tsundere]]: Who other than Cloche? An attack of Luca's even says so!

* [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity]]: Any revytail that becomes the Heart of Gaea tends to go completely nuts.

* [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds]]: {{spoiler|Infel, who was driven by the pain of losing Nenesha to find a way to eliminate all unhappiness... Too bad her method, Sublimation, happened to be more or less an [[Assimilation Plot]].}}

** Also, {{spoiler|in her Cosmosphere, Luca has a string of personalities that want to murder Croix fighting with other personalities that want to save Croix so that ''they'' can murder him in the next floor. Cloche's Armageddon self attempts to kill Croix so she won't have to suffer the pain of losing him after their relationship grows closer.}}

*** Not to mention her spell "Romance" which summons up a cleaver wielding psycho.

** {{spoiler|A sort-of example exists in Infel as well, who was so torn up by Nenesha's death that she decided to put the world through an [[Assimilation Plot]].}}

* [[Zettai Ryouiki]]: Hoo boy. Luca's standard and Tres Super Bien costumes, Cloche's Standard (in a way) and Metamorole Model costumes, {{spoiler|Jacqli}}'s Spirit Gunner costume, and Skycat.

 

[[Category:Eastern RPG]]

[[Category:Video Game]]