Atelier (franchise): Difference between revisions

* ''Helmina & Culus: Atelier Lilie Another Story'' PS2 (2001)

* ''Atelier Judie: The Alchemist of Gramnad'' PS2/PSP (2002/2010)

* ''Atelier Marie, Elie & Anise: Message On The Breeze'' GBA (2003)

* '''''[[Atelier Iris Eternal Mana|Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana]]''''' PS2 (2004/'''2005''')

* '''''[[Atelier Iris 3|Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm]]''''' PS2 (2006/'''2007''')

* ''Atelier <s>Lise</s> Liese: The Alchemist of Orde'' NDS (2007)

* '''''[[Mana Khemia 2 Fall of Alchemy|Mana Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy]]''''' PS2/PSP (2008/'''2009''')

* '''''[[Atelier Annie|Atelier Annie: Alchemists of Sera Island]]''''' NDS ('''2009''')

* [[Ambiguously Gay]]: Not who you might initially expect. Of all people, {{spoiler|Elie Traum, the ''heroine'' of the second game, has an ending that raises a ''lot'' of eyebrows. She can sort-of flirt with several of the male characters during the course of the game, but she also develops quite a relationship with Romauge the dancer. Romauge is one of two characters in ''Atelier Elie'' to have a fully-cinematic ending devoted exclusively to her, and in it... Elie abandons alchemy to run off and be a traveling dancer with Romauge and "pursue her heart". The overall tone of the ending is ''intensely'' romantic and more importantly ''is the only "romantic" ending available in the game''. And then there's the fact that Elie desperately wishes to contact Marie and "thank" Marie for saving her life and, well, you end up with a lot of speculation}}. Gust has never come out directly and said that the character is gay, however, so strictly speaking it remains speculative.

* [[An Entrepreneur Is You]]: Some games, but especially in ''Atelier Violet''. The reason Violet learns alchemy is so that she can build her own shop of wonders to drive visitors (and thus, economy) to Karotte Village, which is smack dab in the middle of nowhere. Failure to get ~500 visitors within ~1000 days lead to Bad End where the village is abandoned. (This is easier than it sounds, really.)

* [[Bag of Sharing]]: Explained in the context of ''Atelier Iris 2''; Felt and Viese possess a pair of rings which essentially allow them to teleport items to each other, so that Viese can make things out of all the crazy stuff Felt finds in the larger world, while remaining safe in their hometown until the very end of the game. The other games avert this trope by simply never taking control of the protagonist away from the player and making characters who aren't in the current party inaccessible for equipment purposes.

* [[Bash Brothers|Bash]] [[Brother-Sister Team]]: Violet and Bartolomaus from ''Atelier Violet''. [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?|Their quarrelling is a combination attack that hits all enemies.]]

** Ash in ''[[Atelier Iris 3]]'' is basically the exact same character as Arlin from the first ''Iris'' game, albeit an antagonist this time. So are Crowley {{spoiler|or should I say the Shadow Gem possessing him}} and Mull from the same two instalments, although Crowley isn't a [[Smug Snake]] (whether or not he reaches [[Magnificent Bastard]] is up to you) or a [[Card-Carrying Villain]], thus making him a much better character.

** Also, while Gust has never come out and said it, a lot of people rather suspect that the "Salburg" of the classic games is based ''very'' heavily on the real life city of [[wikipedia:Salzburg|Salzburg]].

** ''[[Atelier Rorona]]'' finally does away with this, as befits [[Victorian Britain|its setting]]; most of Cordelia's special attacks utilize her exquisitely-crafted pistol, and you do encounter enemies who are armed with guns. The other party members don't use guns simply due to a preference for other means of defending themselves.

*** Funnily enough, though, the trope then ''comes back'' after a fashion in the later Arland games; none of the party members in ''Totori'' or ''Meruru'', outside of Cordelia, use guns (and Cory isn't even playable in ''Meruru'') despite some of the enemies still wielding them.

* [[Fetch Quest]]: Poked at and lampshaded in ''Atelier Iris 3'' wherein randomly generated quests that involve getting an item are directly labeled "Fetch". This is also part of the bread and butter of making money in classic Atelier games, with a twist: the items to be "fetched" are generally not available simply by punching [[Mooks]]. You have to gather the materials and then ''[[Item Crafting|make]]'' the item in question. This is a key in both random cash quests as well as quests that advance the plot.

* [[Fiery Redhead]]: Liese Randel, of ''Atelier Liese'' and ''Atelier Annie''. She's a bit calmer in ''Annie'', but only a bit, and doesn't really take much crap from anyone and doesn't really take "no" for an answer. In her own game, she's even more forceful and is the [[Redheaded Hero]] to boot.

* [[Fish Out of Temporal Water]]: How the eponymous character of ''Atelier Judie'' starts her adventure, due to a freak alchemy lab incident. Well, apparently [[Medieval Stasis|nothing much changed]] between the 7th century and the 9th century.

* [[Gainaxing]]: The manga of ''Atelier Marie & Elie'' uses a print version of this a ''lot''; even Elie isn't immune, however, which feels extremely weird given how in all the game artwork her bust is not emphasized at all.

* [[Knight in Shining Armor]]: Many of the "freeform" early Ateliers have a character like this who can accompany the main character on out-of-town quests (as well as serve as a kind of love interest), with Enderk and Daglass in the earlier games and Marius in the more recent ''Atelier Liese''.

** Sterk from the Arland games is an examination of the concept; he ''wants'' to be a knight {{spoiler|and serves as a love interest for Rorona}} but he was born in an age where knights are becoming a thing of the past. His multi-game character arc involves his coming to terms with this and looking at what it really means to be a "knight".

* [[Lady of War]]: A '''lot''' of supporting characters across various games. Kyrielich from ''Marie'', Yurika from ''Elie'' (sort of), Katarina from ''Violet'', Fee from ''Iris 2''...

* [[Low Fantasy]]: While the games are hardly gritty or cynical (just the opposite really), they are also generally low-blatant-magic, with a focus on creating items for your use to get things like "fire spells" and the like, are heavily dominated by humanity, and don't possess a scope that goes much beyond a single country or principality (in the earlier games this is part of the point; you're operating on a time limit so you don't have time to go [[Walking the Earth]] for whatever you need). One of the criticisms directed toward the ''Atelier Iris'' sub-series is that it tended very much away from the Low Fantasy roots of its predecessors, and ''Mana Khemia'' and the DS Atelier games (''Liese'' and ''Annie'') get credit for bringing the series back toward this; the dev team of ''Atelier Rorona'' [http://atelier-ps3.jp/rorona/d-blog/index.htm openly stated] that they intended to go back to this full-force with that game, which the Arland games did.

* [[Mana]]: In the ''Iris'' and ''[[Mana Khemia]]'' games, anyway.

* [[Magical Girl]]: Poin of ''Atelier Liese'' '''wants''' to be this. How much she succeeds is open to debate, especially since she seems to fixate on poor Liese as a rival and "villain" (at least until {{spoiler|Liese [[Love Freak|feeds her a sob-heavy version about why she ran away from home]] }}).

** "Marth Syndrome" has now struck the franchise ''twice''; ''Trinity Universe'' has been released in the US, and it features characters from Gust, Nippon Ichi and Idea Factory games... including the titular heroine of ''Atelier Violet''. This means that Violet joins Marie in debuting in America in a game ''not directly produced by her home company''. Frothing, possibly rabid gamers [[In Joke|armed with carrots]] have been spotted outside NISA's offices at this point.

** And, of course, there's the fact that, thanks to bringing ''[[Atelier Annie]]'' over first, this trope now applies to Liese Randel, the heroine of ''Atelier Liese''.

* [[Nice Hat]]: This seems to be a requirement for being a heroine of a "main" Atelier game; every heroine has some bit of headwear that is prominent to varying degrees. Liese and Annie have particularly notable hats; Liese's is doubly notable as it disappears once she's no longer the main character in ''Atelier Annie''.

* [[Nintendo Hard]]: The third game of the series, ''Atelier Lilie'', has a reputation for being hellishly difficult to complete with any kind of satisfactory ending without a lot of planning beforehand and knowledge of how the game works. The optional material in many of the latter games tends not to slouch, either.

* [[No Fourth Wall]]: Popo's amusing tutorials in ''Atelier Iris''.

** Also, during one scene in ''AI1'', Norn the Catgirl gets frightened by all the monsters in the woods, and asks to sleep in the same bag as Klein. She thinks it's innocent, but Klein gets the entirely ''wrong'' idea and says "[[Media Watchdog|No way! The ESRB would go nuts!]]"

** {{spoiler|While she seems to have canonically saved her family from ruin, she continues this sort of behavior in ''Atelier Annie'', having apparently given her parents the flip to go participate in the Sera Island alchemy tournament. Despite outward appearances, though, her motives don't seem to be driven entirely by money this time...}}

* [[Reluctant Monster]]: Pamela, who appears in multiple ''Atelier'' titles, is a ghost who either denies she is a ghost or doesn't want to believe that she can be unsettling to the living. Also, the "demons" portrayed in the manga version of ''Atelier Marie & Elie'' [[Our Demons Are Different|don't seem like such bad guys, most of the time.]]

* [[Running Gag]]: Player characters often shout "[[Captain Obvious|Barrel]]!" whenever the player searches one. Yes, this dates all the way back to Marie.

* [[Schizo-Tech]]: Assiduously averted in the first five games (''Marie'' to ''Violet'') as all of them maintained a more or less realistic technology level for [[The Renaissance|their settings]]. Some of this began to creep into the games with the advent of the ''Iris'' sub-series, however (although it never got as bad as in [[Ar Tonelico]]).

** This is all ''[[Lampshade Hanging|poked fun at and lampshaded]]'' in ''Atelier Rorona'', where a previously Renaissance-level civilization has discovered the ruins of a [[Precursors|more advanced culture]] and is slowly integrating technology as it is understood. By and large they have so far advanced to [[Victorian Britain|the steam age]] and firearms are becoming increasingly common, but a few more advanced pieces of technology appear throughout town, like ''a computerized bulletin board, complete with touchscreen'' in the town square.

** And then, when Tokyopop finally decided to bring over the ''Atelier Marie & Elie'' manga, first they were going to sell the books online only without any bookstore exposure (a decision later reverted), and ''then'' when the company hit financial rocks, guess which series was thrown overboard with only one volume to go?

* [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism]]: Pretty much every single entry into the franchise is deliberately slammed just about the ''entire way'' toward idealism. There is '''''no''''' problem that cannot be solved with the proper application of science, logic, and faith, and the life of your fellow man can ''always'' be made more pleasant. Even in the few games where the situation can look dark and grim, the protagonists do not lose hope because they ''know'' that the world can be made a better place, [[Determinator|though the work of their own hands, however small]]. The games are relentlessly optimistic in tone - practically to the point of some accusing them of being [[Tastes Like Diabetes|rather too sweet]].

* [[Smug Snake]]: Many of the villains. (This makes punching their faces in highly satisfying.)

*** For some of the above examples, ''Atelier Annie'' eventually came down with "Randel" and "Orde", which work... along with ''Liese'' for the protagonist of ''Atelier "Lise"'', creating a little confusion as to what ''Annie'''s prequel should be called.

*** NISA is also proving to be a little inconsistent with names for characters from unreleased games in the "music DLC" for the latter [[Atelier Totori|Arland]] [[Atelier Meruru|games]] - in the Meruru DLC, Violet is named as "Violette", Liese is named ''back'' to Lise (and was "Lize" in the Totori music DLC!) and Lilie is "Lily".

** This is especially hilarious for the name of the principality in which the first three games (and the manga) take place in - ever since the beginning of the series, Gust Inc. has spelled it "Salburg" and even [http://www.salburg.com runs a website] bearing that name. Given that the setting is meant to be vaguely like Renaissance Germany, however, the pronunciation in katakana features a "za" instead of a "sa"; ergo, the name of the city is rendered by Tokyopop and some fan translators as "Zarlburg". Apparently Americans are [[Viewers are Morons|too dumb]] to understand [[Gratuitous German]] pronunciation.

* [[Stripperific]]: The series tends to yo-yo on this a little. While the heroine of the original game, Marie, wore an outfit whose chest can best be described as [[media:marie.gif|"liberal"]], and several other heroines (Judie of her own game, Lita from ''Atelier Iris'', and the Iris from ''Atelier Iris 3'') all have somewhat revealing costumes, in general the rest of the female heroines in the series tend to be very tastefully and possibly even conservatively dressed. The best examples are [[media:elie.gif|Elie]] and [[media:viese.jpg|Viese]] from ''Atelier Elie'' and ''Atelier Iris 2'' respectively; they're dressed in such a way that aside from their hands, the lowest you can see exposed skin is the '''neckline'''. And these are not low necklines.

* [[Translation Convention]]: Given the lengths to which the earlier games of the series attempt to evoke that "Renaissance Germany" feel, it's generally assumed that characters speak German or something similar in the context of the games. In many Salburg games, even parts of the interface are in German.

* [[Troperiffic]]: The very first game of the series, ''Atelier Marie'', has a lot of fun with this: the intro appears to be lifted directly from [[Record of Lodoss War]], "Light And Darkness" and all, and seems to be setting up an incredibly cliched experience... then the game reminds you that 99% of the population of this world ''isn't'' a world-saving hero and just goes about their normal lives. [[The Everyman|And that you're one of these people]]. Cue title screen and the surprise of many 1997 gamers.