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Main Characters
Erin
Do I look crazy to you?
Our heroine, who has not left her home in two years. She suffers from some sort of mental illness that causes her to see hallucinations of video game characters, and experience games as if she was in them.- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: In Critical Miss Erin had her downer moments but still enjoyed gaming and her friends. Here she has completely given up on the world and everyone in it.
- Ate Her Gun: Played for laughs as she attempts this when she learns that Gunlord is nothing but Capture the Flag. Fortunately her weapon is broken.
- Covert Pervert: When Althea said she was going to flash Gunny, Erin immediately thought of one of the modern uses of the term. She actually meant she was going to blind him with a flash of light.
- The Hermit: Erin hasn't left her apartment for at least two years.
- Playing Possum: Does this in order to sneak into Shard Corporation during Ultimate Saga VII.
- The Stoner: Weed is Erin’s sustenance apparently.
- Stripperiffic: Because she's female Erin is force to wear skimpy outfits while playing Vampire Fortress and Ultimate Saga VII. She is not amused when this happens.
Rad Panda
Are you having a radical day?
The main character of a popular 1990s video game franchise. He was Erin's imaginary friend when she was young and wants to help her get out of her funk.- All-Loving Hero: Rad is the kindest and most trusting character around and always tries to be friendly to everyone, to the point of naïvety as he believed that an evil organization would send the group a coupon for soda and not attack them if he told them their exact location.
- Berserk Button: He does not like being called a raccoon.
- Black Mage: Selects this class in Ultimate Saga VII despite Erin suggesting that he try a simpler class.
- Catchphrase: "Hey Babe. Are you having a radical day?"
- Cute Little Fangs: His default expression includes them.
- The Ditz: Rad isn't very smart.
- Expy: Of Sonic The Hedgehog.
- Handwraps of Awesome: Tries wearing these to update his image to appeal to the more edgier modern gaming audience. Unfortunately, he used duct tape on his fur.
- Hidden Depths: Despite his role as The Ditz he knows a great deal about crystal chemistry.
- Hypocrite: Poking fun at the attitudes about violence in the 80s and early 90s, Rad hates picking fights with other people but thinks it's fine to shoot other sentient species as long as they're not humans. All while ignoring the fact he's not human himself. Lampshaded by Erin.Erin: That seems inconsistent, perhaps even bigoted when you think about it.
- Non-Human Sidekick: To Erin.
- Puppy-Dog Eyes: Rad Panda's persuasive technique. It keeps Erin off the pot for at least a day.
- The McCoy: Rad is totally dedicated to doing what is right even if it means ignoring the very rules of the game he is playing. This creates friction with Gunny being, The Spock, who will initially abandon a friend if it means completing a mission.
- Totally Radical: Rad Panda just oozes the 1990s.
Gunnery "Gunny" Sergeant
- An Arm and a Leg: He loses his left hand in a Deliberate Injury Gambit against Daedalus.
- Badass in Distress: After fighting Daedalus in Ultimate Saga VII he is captured by Shard Corp.
- Brainwashed: By Shard Corp. after his capture.
- The Comically Serious: Due to using military terminology and logic for every situation, no matter how mundane. He comes into this role even more after he moves into Erin's apartment and starts commenting on her lifestyle.
- Disney Death: Seemingly dies dramatically at the end of the Gunlord arc, only to show up perfectly fine - despite retaining his injuries - at Erin's apartment. He handwaves the experience as simply a "healing coma".
- Duct Tape for Everything: How he patches up the hole in his torso, after recovering from his Disney Death.
- Expy: Of the Master Chief.
- The Faceless: Is never seen without his dome helmet, and in Ultimate Saga VII he simply wears his class' hat on top of it.
- Foil: To Rad Panda. Rad is an idealistic and cheerful retro character, while Gunny is a gritty, stone-faced modern first-person-shooter protagonist.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: He has gotten a sword put through him twice! Once in his own game and once in Ultimate Saga VII.
- Impaled Palm: As part of a Deliberate Injury Gambit against Daedalus.
- Not So Above It All: He initially scoffs at Erin and Rad playing video games all day long. He then starts backseat-gaming Erin, before simply demanding that she hand him the controller.
- One-Man Army: He takes on an army of aliens and the series' equivalent to Shinra single handedly and pretty much beats both until the Boss characters step in.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Takes this role after leaving his game, encouraging Erin to start eating better, exercising, and improving her overall living conditions.
- The Spock: Adheres to logic (or at least his version of it) whenever possible, and is utterly focused on the mission at hand. This creates a brief falling-out between him and Rad Panda, due to Rad being The McCoy.
Althea
"I'm just the Healer."
A supporting character in Ultimate Saga VII that joins Erin's group when her team in captured.- Action Girl: During the group's infiltration of Shard Corp. she does almost all of the fighting.
- All of the Other Reindeer: Most of the people around her when she was growing up avoided her because she was better at fire magic than healing magic.
- Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Most elves possess an affinity for healing White Magic, and have blonde hair and blue eyes. Althea, meanwhile, was born with a rare affinity for fire magic, and instead has pink hair and red eyes.
- Badass Adorable: Once she embraces her true magical talent, proceeds to take on her game's Sephiroth stand-in and an entire army of mooks single-handledly with lots of fire and about a dozen fire-elemental summons. By the time Erin and Rad check in on her, she's not even being strained, while putting the enemy hopelessly on the defensive.
- Badass Bookworm: Her magic training required a lot of reading, and then she gets her hands on an actual spellbook.
- Berserk Button: Do not imply
that the ancient crystal beings are evil or she will "boil your brain till it bursts from your smoldering skull". - Beware the Nice Ones: She may seem sweet and innocent but she also really seems to enjoy using her fire magic on people.
- Expy: Of Aerith Gainsborough
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: When she accepts her affinity for fire magic she gets these.
- Hard Work Hardly Works: She gets both sides of this. After dedicating her life to it and struggling all the while she's barely passable as a healer. However, she takes to fire magic Likea Fish Takesto Water and becomes a combat monster the minute she finds Rad's book. Whoever placed her in her study program at school apparently did a terrible job.
- Jumped at the Call: The second she was offered the position of Landslide's healer she took it because she wanted to live up to her peoples' expectations.Althea: "I listened [to the Elemental Crystal] for hours, but the details were unimportant. I was wanted. I was needed."
- Let's Get Dangerous!: After she accepts she is not suited to be the team's White Mage and "borrows" Rad's spellbook. She is ready to throw down.
- The Medic: As she is the stand-in for Aerith in Ultimate Saga VII this is her initial party role. Turns out she's apparently far more suited to fire magic.
- Playing with Fire: She is much better with fire magic than at healing.
- Pointy Ears: As an elf, this is only to be expected.
- Psychotic Smirk: As seen here.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her red eyes are a sign of her affinity for fire magic, and she gains bright red Monochromatic Eyes whenever she channels it.
- Sarcasm-Blind: Like most of the cast of Ultimate Saga, much to Erin's frustration.
Other Characters
Gunlord: Combat Enhanced
Ultimate Saga VII
The Elemental Crystal of Light
The Big Good and Big Bad of Ultimate Saga VII, whose race is being slowly destroyed by the Shard Corporation grinding elemental crystals up to make their soda.
- Big Good: Established as this, and it gathers up the various protagonists to fight the Shard Corporation. Ultimately subverted, however.
- Big Bad: Turns out to be this, as it created the Shard Corporation in a bid to take over the world through the Shard Cola.
- Insistent Terminology: It insists that it is an elemental crystal, despite Erin and Althea both pointing out that Light is not a scientific chemical element or a classical element like fire, wind, water, and earth.
- May Contain Evil: Part of its plan, as Shard Cola contains powderized elemental crystals. This allows it to create People Puppets out of anyone who regularly drinks the soda; which encompasses nearly everyone in the world of Ultimate Saga VII by this point.
- Wham Line: "Fair Althea. So brave. So loyal. So stupid."
Landslide
The protagonists of Ultimate Saga VII are a group of heroic eco-terrorists summoned together by the Elemental Crystal to defeat the Shard Corporation.
- Expy: Collectively of AVALANCHE, and the group includes expies of Cloud Strike, Tifa Lockheart, Aerith Gainsborough, Vincent Valentine and Barret Wallace.
- Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: The members of Landslide consider themselves a "protest movement", but a captive Mook quickly points out that they are officially eco-terrorists and that they routinely blow up factories full of innocent workers. This is soon supported by all of the Tifa-expy's pitched plans amounting to terrorist acts, including bombing buildings, kidnapping/assassinating officials and hijacking airships.
Shard Corp.
The antagonists of Ultimate Saga VII; a soft-drink corporation that is harvesting sentient magical crystals as ingredients.
- Evil, Inc.: Of the Type 3: Cartoonishly Evil variety.
- Expy: The entire company is a less competent version of Shinra Inc.
Daedalus
- An Arm and a Leg: Gets his right arm blown off during his duel with Gunny.
- Artificial Limbs: Said lost right arm is replaced by a skeletal arm made out of crystal.
- The Dragon: Is this to Shard Corp. CEO Raymond Shardee. Or not. Turns out he's actually working for the Elemental Crystal.
- Expy: Of Sephiroth who is an expy of Psaro the Manslayer. Making him an expy of an expy.
- Too Many Belts: He wears three.
Raymond Shardee
- Failed a Spot Check: He tries to lie about his identity in front of a giant titled portrait of himself while in his office.
- Hypocrite: He refuses to drink his company's soda because it contains to much corn syrup while knowingly ignoring the fact the same soda contains mind controlling crystals.
- Oh, Crap!: Between being held at gunpoint by Erin, betrayed by Daedalus, and Althea threatening to light him on fire he has quite a few of these moments.
- Sarcasm-Blind: Chapter 156 shows him trying to figure out the concept.
