Tales of Phantasia/Characters

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Cless/Cress Alvein/Albain/Albane

Cless is an archetypical RPG hero- he's a Hot Blooded, courageous, Book Dumb, and slightly oblivious country boy with a sword who gets sucked into an adventure he didn't want. He loves justice, and is motivated by wanting to avenge his Doomed Hometown.

• Aerith and Bob- his parents have Hispanic names, Miguel and Maria. He does not.
• Bishonen
• Mr. Fanservice
• Fight in The Nude- Slightly averted. In the original, Cless' weapon graphic changes to reflect its type - a sword, axe, spear or halberd. In the remakes, both weapon and shield graphics are unique for each piece of equipment.
• The Hero
• Infinity+1 Sword- Excalibur and Gungnir 3.
• Katanas Are Just Better- Subverted - the Muramasa is the best slash weapon when you can first get it, but has low stabbing power, gets overthrown eventually, and is finally left in the dust by the Arthurian and Norse-based Infinity Plus One Swords
• Names to Know In Anime- Takeshi Kusao
  • Also his English VA in the OVA, Johnny Yong Bosch. And if Radiant Mythology is any indication, Bosch will probably voice him again if Cress appears in another English Tales game.
• Nice Hat- A headband, technically, but it's still a signature piece of his outfit, and you can win it by beating him up in the Tales of Eternia cameo battle.
• Spell My Name With an "S"- His name was initially translated as Cless Alvein, but in both Tales of Destiny and Tales of Eternia it was localized as Cress Albain. And in the GBA version of Phantasia it was changed to Cress Albane. Cress ultimately makes more sense, as it's a type of herb, like Mint.
• Sword of Plot Advancement- The Eternal Sword

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Mint Adenade

A Mysterious Waif Cless meets after being captured and thrown in jail. He helps her escape and find the one person who can help them defeat Dhaos. She is an orphan from a long line of healers with a deep connection to the legendary Unicorn.

• The Chick
• Cool Hat - Given to her by her mom.
• First Girl Wins- Arche has a crush on Cless, but Cless ends up with Mint, whom he met first.
• Friend to All Living Things
• Memento MacGuffin - Her mother's hat and earrings. The earrings double as a Chekhov's Boomerang.
• Mysterious Waif
• Names to Know In Anime - Junko Iwao
• Rescue Romance - Cless meets her by saving her from prison.
• Snow Means Love - She and Cless share their big romantic scene in the snow.
• Stoic Woobie - She's fully aware that her mother is dead for most of the game, but stays strong regardless.
• Supreme Chef - In contract to Arche's Lethal Chef.
• Staff Of Plot Advancement- the Unicorn Horn
• White Magician Girl- One of the straightest examples ever. Arguably the Trope Codifier.
• Virgin Power - It's why she could approach the Unicorn.
• Yamato Nadeshiko- She even gets it as a title ("Perfect Lady" in English).

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Klarth/Clark/Claus F. Lester

Shortly after arriving in the past, Cless and Mint seek out Klarth, a researcher who is trying to find a way for humans to use magic. On the way, he ended up rediscovering the lost art of summoning, and is making an effort to resurrect it, much to the scorn of his colleagues. Part Mad Scientist, part Witch Doctor, part Mr. Exposition, and all Cool Old Guy, he acts aloof and vain, but he truly does care for the crazy kids dragging him all over the world. His weapon is a book.

• Bald of Awesome - Subverted. It's clear to everybody that he has long silver hair and there's nothing to suggest it's a wig, but Arche suggests it anyway.
• Biseinen
• Chivalrous Dirty Old Man- Well... older than the others, to be precise.
• Cool Hat
• Cool Old Guy- Okay, so he's not that old, but by RPG standards, 29 is pretty ancient. Arche lampshades this at one point. (Then again though; a lot of this is partly because he's drawn in a way that makes him look older than he really is, as well as the white hair)
• Deadpan Snarker- He has his moments.
• Facial Markings: And a full-body Power Tattoo... Not that they do anything.
  • The skits imply that they're required components for a summoner.
• Improbable Weapon User- he attacks by swatting at enemies with a book.
• Jerk With a Heart of Gold- In the beginning, until he eventually loses the "jerk" part altogether.
• Magikarp Power - Klarth is a mage who first joins the party with no spells at all! He'll end up being a better offensive force than Arche during your stay in the Past era, however.
• Mood Whiplash - Klarth breaks up a humorous moment during a skit in the future where the rest of the party are realizing how old they would be by mentioning that he's long since six feet under in that time period.
• Names to Know In Anime- Kazuhiko Inoue
• Nice Hat- A running gag in the PSX remake.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend- With his assistant, Mirald. You're a fool if you buy it.
• The Smart Guy
• Spell My Name With an "S"- His name was translated as Clark in Tales of Eternia, and as Claus in the Gameboy Advance version of Phantasia, there's a chance he'll become Klarth once more if the route Radiant Mythology took is taken.
• Summon Magic
• Throw the Book At Them
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight- Nobody ever comments on his bizarre outfit and tattoos, even though he's the one always explaining the situation to political and military leaders...
• White-Haired Pretty Boy

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Arche Klaine/Klein

A half-elf from the past, she joins the party because they need someone who can use magic to defeat Dhaos. She is usually immature and easygoing, and a bit of a perv, but she's a powerful addition to the team, and essential at lightening the mood. Her weapon of choice is the flying broom that she rides on.

• Action Girl- Hey, Black Magician Girls are Action Girls too!
• Badass Adorable
• Black Magician Girl
• The Big Girl- A Boisterous Bruiser Squishy Wizard variation.
• Cute Witch
• Genki Girl
• Good Bad Girl- Implied at certain points and confirmed when she can't approach the unicorn. The DeJap version, however, exaggerated it by implying that she Really Gets Around.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy- She has a crush on Cless, but knows he likes Mint, so she backs down. And then waits to meet the famous Chester.
• Improbable Weapon User- Her weapon is a broom. That flies.
• Lethal Chef
• Mayfly-December Romance- She's a half-elf, so her life span is much longer than a human's. She and Chester end up in a relationship, even though she is over a hundred years older than he is, and he will die long before her.
• Memetic Mutation- A line from the DeJap Fan Translation- "I bet Arche fucks like a tiger."
• Names to Know In Anime- Mika Kanai
• Never Say Goodbye - Arche refuses to bid her friends from 100 and 150 years past her time goodbye when she returns to her own era at the end of the game, but this is because, unlike Klarth, she's a Half-Elf and her lifespan is such that she'll outlive them.
• Pettanko
• Rose-Haired Girl
• Slap Slap Kiss- with Chester
• Tsundere
• Who Wants to Live Forever?- She won't live forever per se, but she'll still vastly outlive all her friends, and does suffer from the angst associated with this trope.
• You Gotta Have Pink Hair

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Chester Barkright/Burklight/Barklight

Cless's childhood friend, an orphan who lost his only family when their Doomed Hometown was destroyed by the army trying to ressurrect Dhaos. He's the best archer in town... Or at least, he was, before the town burned down. He's very Hot Blooded.

• The Archer: Subverted, since he's Hot Blooded.
  • Also revealed to have noticeable muscles in the hot springs scene, which the sword wielding hero, Cless, admires.
• Attack Attack Attack: In the SNES version, since he had no skills then.
• Badass Normal
• Bishonen
• Dead Little Sister
• Determinator: He almost died, and then when you finally get him back, he's around 30 levels below everybody else. But that won't stop him from training heavily and joining you in the war against Dhaos.
• Mr. Fanservice
• Hot Blooded
• The Lancer
• Magikarp Power - In the SNES game, he comes back extremely underleveled, but train him up, give him the Berserk Bow, and set his AI to recklessly fire, and his damage output will be second only to Cless.
• My Sister Is Off Limits - He was initially hostile to Cless when they were younger, because he saw that Ami had a pretty obvious crush on him.
• Names to Know In Anime - Kentaro Ito
• Promotion to Parent- His parents are dead, so he raises his little sister Ami.
• Put On a Bus - Misses out on a considerable length of game when Cless and Mint leave him behind when they travel to the past.
• Slap Slap Kiss- His relationship with Arche starts out a bit... rough.
• Spell My Name With an "S"- His last name was translated as Burklight in the Gameboy Advance version of Phantasia, and it was translated to (the technically correct) Barklight in Radiant Mythology.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair
• You Killed My Little Sister: Chester takes it even further than Cless ever did.

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Suzu Fujibayashi

Suzu is a ten-year-old ninja girl from the future. In the PSX remake and beyond, the party meets her in Volt's Temple. (In the SNES version, you met her when (if) you managed to find the hidden ninja village, Japoni.) She's next in line for the position of chief of Japoni, since her parents are Brainwashed and Crazy and ran off. In the PSX remake and beyond, she will join your party after a brief sidequest involving fighting in the Euclid coliseum and finding Japoni. She fights with a nintou.

• Action Girl
• Ascended Extra- Was totally unplayble and had a very plain sprite in the original game.
• Big Damn Hero- Appears and helps you during a coliseum fight with her Brainwashed and Crazy parents.
• Emotionless Girl
• Guide Dang It- Getting her to join you is... annoying, to say the least.
• Highly-Visible Ninja- It's not a bright color, but her suit is pinkish-red.
• Little Miss Badass- You know it!
• Ninja
• Optional Party Member: However, she was canonically there in the final battle...gamewise at least. In the OVA, she fights off her own parents
• Sixth Ranger
• Tear Jerker- Her backstory as a whole
• Token Mini-Moe

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Dhaos

The "Demon Lord," a man from another world who is wreaking havoc on the world and needs to be stopped. Later, it's revealed that his homeworld was dying, and he came to Aselia to prevent the people from destroying their Mana Tree, and get a seed from it so that he can save his homeworld. He has the ability to travel through time.

• Beam Spam- "DHAOS LASER!!!"
• Belated Backstory-It wasn't until Narikiri Dungeon that his whole schtick was finally explained.
• Big Bad- Although his vast knowledge surrounding the World Tree and his fighting prowess also allow him to fill in as his own army's Evil Genius and Brute.
• Fallen Hero: To quote the Tales wiki; he was relieved when he didn't have to use force to stop a war and began to organise relief efforts for the citizens who were caught in the crossfire. When Dios fired a mana weapon, thus wiping it from the planet, his immediate reaction was to see if anything could be done to save the World Tree. Upon finding that it was too late, he immediately headed to Aselia... And then the plot happened.
• Fantastic Racism- Against humans. Turns into something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the humans end up doing exactly what he was assuming they would... but they only do it trying to stop him from attacking them without explanation. The anime changes things around somewhat (see "Poor Communication Kills").
• Humans Are Bastards- Subverted. In the sequel to Phantasia, Narikiri Dungeon, it is revealed that when Dhaos came to Earth and saw the state it was in, his heart was filled with malicious intent, which he himself acknowledged as his hidden voice of evil.
• Memetic Mutation- "WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?!"
• Names to Know In Anime- Kaneto Shiozawa was his first voice actor. After Shiozawa's death, Toshiyuki Morikawa voiced Dhaos.
• Not So Different- Cless realizes that they're both trying to achieve the same thing for their respective worlds and they see each other in the same way.
• Poor Communication Kills- In the game only. In the OVA, he tried to tell the people that they were about to royally screw themselves over, they just refused to listen and called him a monster.
• Restored My Faith in Humanity: According to the Tales wiki, his spirit comes to understand that he's Not So Different from humans and that the darkness in both their hearts must not be expelled but, rather, controlled.
• Sealed Evil in A Can- he was sealed away by Cless's, Mint's, and Morrison's ancestors when he first came to Aselia.
• That One Boss- Especially so. You fight him 3 separate times (including the 3-round final battle where he has two extra forms), and every last one will have you pulling your hair out in frustration.
  • On the other hand, at least one of his final battle forms can be an Anticlimatic Boss if you can keep him from casting; it's possible to curb-stomp him so badly he only manages to get off a single attack.
• The Other Darrin- Dhaos's first voice actor died.
• The Wise King: Until he came to Aselia...
• We Could Have Avoided All This
• Well-Intentioned Extremist- Not very well done in the game, however. The OVA fixed it by making him much more sympathetic.