Valkyria Chronicles/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

** That's implied, but Maximilian wouldn't have any to begin with-the Imperial bloodline doesn't carry any Valkyrian blood.

* Unit death is permanent in all battles, including skirmishes and reports. So, what is happening when you have a guy survive one story battle and then get killed off in a report battle that is placed earlier in the chronology? Does his ghost come back briefly for revenge? Do we have a trope for this?

* The cutscene directly after Mission 16. Maximillian realizes that {{spoiler|Alicia}} is about kamikaze herself and blow up the Marmota, so he tells his mortars to focus their fire at her. The Mortar crews evidently decide that this would be a ''perfect'' time to stop firing. GAH!

 

** Seconded. What the plot does to the army infuriates me. No one in the main party cares about all the people who live because of Faldio's decision. No one seems to care much that the majority of those people probably also died at Ghirlandaio, either. Army or militia, these are still all people who signed up knowing that they might have to risk their lives to save their country from foreign invasion. Surely they had families who mourn for them? And surely there must have been ''some'' people who survived Ghirlandaio. Squads that were reassigned once Selvaria was defeated and her army routed? People so injured that they were sent off to whatever facilities Gallia has for dealing with its war-wounded? Hell, Squad Seven itself? Isn't there anyone in Squad Seven who is in the slightest glad that Gallia had its own Valkyria that saved them? We don't get to hear about these possibilities, though, because the writers wanted to get across a bunch of Aesops about how terrible war is and didn't take the time to make sure that the game's messages were ''consistent'' throughout. The people in the Imperial army are humans too? Well, one story about that is fine; we don't need to distinguish their designs any. Gallia's military has inept and arrogant leadership? Lets vaporize the whole body; after all, no ''decent'' human being would ''choose'' to be in such a horrible, violent profession, right? (You can tell this is true by the way most everyone in the militia either retires as soon as possible or gets into training or tech development positions rather than remaining in any positions that would directly see battle.) Anyway, the army's probably mostly Gallian nobility, and surely you can see how ''awful'' and ''bad'' the nobility are by looking at General Damon and Prime Minister Borg, two examples that I'm ''sure'' are fair representatives of an entire class of people. (I'd like to hope that the second game will treat this with any more subtlety--it would damn well be hard to treat it with less--but so far I haven't heard anything that makes me give it the benefit of the doubt.)

** The Manga at least had the decency to give the impression that the main personality of the Army was that they were cocky assholes who considers any non-army victory a battle that probably wasn't that hard anyway. Not that is an excuse or anything, of course, but in the game we have just General Damon being General Damon and one soldier striking a surrendered, unarmed prisoner (You know who I'm talking about).

 

* In the anime, killing off Vyse they way they did. Why would you do something like that knowing that it would [[Skies of Arcadia (Video Game)|piss off a entire certain fanbase?]]

* Does emperor Maximilian have some kind of weird, racist Darcsen fetish? I mean, it seems like most Gallians won't touch a Darcsen with the end of a long stick, and the implication is that the Empire is far more racist than them... Yet when he tries to force Cordelia to marry him, and she shows him that she is actually a Darcsen, he isn't disgusted, he is ''pleased''! Is that some kind of secret perversion of him or something? Do they consider it one in Europa?

** he probably appreciates the irony, and he is less racist than most of the good guys

** It's a strange concept but it is possible for someone to marry a woman from a race they hate. H.P. Lovecraft married a Jew and he still yelled anti-Semitic slurs in public.

 

* The 'verse's Gallia-centric nature, and its' treatment of the AF: the canon's been fairly good at showing that the problems of the universe (racism, authoritarianism, etc) are pretty down-to-earth, and can only be truly solved in a gradual, almost glacial way. The existence of the GRA in the sequel shows that much. But things are improving. And we can accept that much. Except..... there's a massive, 50,0000+ ton elephant in the room that shows absolutely no sign of going away anytime soon. The Autocratic East Europan Imperial Alliance. [[The Empire]] has already fought three wars with Gallia ([[E Ws]] I and II and the Gallian war of independence) and from Helmut's epilogue it has shown no signs of changing. And it is clearly *WELL* outside of Gallian capability to defeat in a lasting manner (take a look at the respective sizes: the tiny blue dot up against the big Red colossus). Which'll only lead it to try again. And again. Which means that there can be no entirely lasting closure, regardless of the numerous improvements in Gallia itself (development, recovery, the downfall of the GRA, etc). And yet... nobody ingame or in the meta apparently seems to be troubled by this fact. No major qualms with the inherently negative (literally being the source or at least exemplar mof most of the 'verse's thematic ills: totalitarianism, militarism, racism, moral perversion (at least regarding Valk powers and human rights), etc.) Why is nobody interested in addressing that?

** It could just be that it's a pointless question to address for the characters. It probably goes without saying that every single character is well aware that it is utterly impossible for them to ever really defeat the Empire, but they have more pressing matters to attend to. Of course, they never have to actually beat the Empire anyway. Even though the story is centered on Gallia, it's clear that it's just a sideshow in the larger war. As long as the Empire is at war with the Federation, they can never really throw more than a token force against Gallia, and dialogue between Avan and Zeri in the sequel implies that if hostilities with the Federation ever really ceased, there's a good chance that the Empire would fracture back into separate countries again. Or, if you want a cop out answer, you can just say that they've learned to live with the fact that as a tiny country they're at the mercy of international superpowers.

* Captain Varrots rank. I know she's just militia and not the actual army, but she has command of multiple squads of men and seems to take her orders directly from the General. Ranks must be pretty squished for the rest of the militia too.

** The militia tends to get assigned to the worst suicide missions. Chances are the reason Varrot takes orders from the general as a captain is because everyone who ought to be between her and him is dead.

* Why do some people insist that the Darcsens are stand-ins for the Japanese? If a Japanese company wants to make a stand-in race for Japan, they'll make it more obvious. I feel like the reason they created Shin Hyuga was to drive the point home that the Darcsens are not meant to represent the Japanese.

** They did, but that was in response to all the negative criticism about that particular interpretation, which (at least as of the first game) is totally valid: they're a homogenized race of people with a distinctly different culture from the rest of Europa, two, they're characterized by dark (usually pin-straight) hair and eyes (though eye color gets less focus than hair color) and the art style lends them to look noticeably Asian (Nadine even has almond-shaped eyes and is probably the most easily-cited example), three, their most prominent member (in the first game, anyway) is a [[Yamato Nadeshiko]], who dies because she's [[Too Good for This Sinful Earth]], and four they make "good luck dolls" in the shape of girls to give as gifts (basically a hina doll, only given to the person they're for instead of being enshrined), on top of the fact that all of Europa is apparently animist (the Feast of All Spirits) and not monotheistic.

** In response to the above two statements, I have several problems:

*** "they're a homogenized race of people with a distinctly different culture from the rest of Europa." So, like real-life Europe?