Narm / Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Our Big Bad's death scene, ladies and gentlemen.

WARNING: As story-significant moments will be brought up here, beware of spoilers

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is by far the most expansive Fire Emblem to date, but it's a bit of a double edged sword as it allows for more unintentionally funny moments, at least some can even be invoked by the player.

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• The Lord class's attack animation when running up to attack enemies while equipped a sword involves them essentially lightly tapping the enemy with the sword to do damage. While they have other animations, it's the most common one, and despite that the animation is intended to be reminiscent of how fencing swords (such as the Rapier) are wielded, it is very jarring for how silly it looks as an animation, especially when factoring in how this animation can appear during battle, making dramatic moments look silly instead.
• Due to the timeskip, some support conversations unintentionally become hilarious when characters continue addressing events that occurred pre-timeskip. It makes it seem like characters have been stewing over events or failing to solve trivial problems, for five years. Especially egregious with Annette and Mercedes, where the ending of their B support, if unlocked in the school phase, makes it seem as if they were mad at each other for the entire timeskip. This is made even more awkward by the fact that, for some unexplainable reason, their A support is locked to after the timeskip, while their B support is not.
• If Annette is wielding her Hero Relic, and is in the right (or wrong) class, it might look like she's carrying around a giant mop instead of a powerful, legendary hammer.
• Characters talk about Edelgard's strong feelings for Byleth on the Azure Moon and Verdant Wind routes, and it is true that Byleth saved her life from the bandits in the prologue, which started her interest in them. The problem is that your opportunities to interact with house leaders that aren't your own are extremely limited after said prologue, so it seems like Edelgard is in love with Byleth because they saved her once and then said hello to her a few times in the intervening months.
• The cutscene when Kostas is defeated for the first time. After laying on the ground for a moment, he suddenly flips up with his band of thieves behind him... All of whom do nothing but stand there and cheer him on rather than fight beside him as he charges at Edelgard, making his gang look rather lazy.
  • Making this scene even more awkward, what does Byleth do when they see this? They charge forward… and push Edelgard away from harm, nearly taking the blow for her, if not for Sothis' interference. Yet not only did Edelgard take out a dagger to protect herself, which itself is a bit odd when she had an axe beforehand yet still means she could've protected herself nevertheless, Byleth had enough time to ready their weapon and block the attack with how long it took Kostas to reach Edelgard, which is exactly what they do when time is reversed. It was meant to introduce Divine Pulse into the story, but it ended up making Byleth look oddly incompetent. You really can't blame Sothis for being annoyed and chastising them over this.
• In general, the Gender-Inclusive Writing might sound a bit awkward in English, particularly everyone referring to Byleth as Jeralt's "child" rather than son or daughter. Even in Jeralt's final moments, he refers to Byleth as "kid"—if the Affectionate Nickname didn't strike any chords before, it's not going to there either. And even worse, in the journal you read right after this, he keeps referring to Byleth, his newborn baby, as "the child". It's especially odd when neither Robin or Corrin were written this way. It makes you wonder why they didn't just have the voice actors record those lines twice with "son" and "daughter" instead. After all, there are other scenes where the dialog is changed to accommodate Byleth's sex.
• On a similar note, the fact that Byleth's name can be decided by the player leads to rather awkward situations where characters refer to them in a variety of ways that aren't their name. One particularly egregious moment takes place during Crimson Flowers; after a battle where it is possible to kill Seteth and Flayn, Rhea understandably is very upset. The scene is actually pretty sad and dramatic, with well done voice work. Up to the point where she refers to Byleth as "professor", despite the fact they haven't actually been a professor for years by that point.
  Rhea:I will ensure you pay for your sins, Professor!
• The cutscene immediately preceding the timeskip on the Crimson Flower route. Byleth being injured and put into a coma for 5 years by Rhea transforming into a dragon and going berserk should be dramatic, but while the other routes end Part 1 with an anime cutscene, CF has to convey this moment with a CG illustration, text boxes, and generic dialogue models, which don't work well for action scenes. Byleth wakes up in the next chapter the same way they do in the other paths, too, with no explanation as to how their body moved.
• Edelgard's incredibly anemic rebuttal to Dimitri calling her out on her actions on the Crimson Flower route comes across as tactless at best, poorly thought at worst, that it unintentionally becomes hilarious during what is supposed to be a significant moment in the game. The intent of the line seemingly was Edelgard calling Dimitri out for how he is just going to continue the cycle of conflict and war without trying to stop it (and doing so out of a desire for revenge rather than any higher ideal), but the localization team decided to have it translated in a way that makes her point sound hypocritical and comical instead of being a valid criticism.
  Dimitri: Must you continue to conquer? Continue to kill?
  Edelgard: Must you continue to reconquer? Continue to kill in retaliation?
• The cutscene ending the penultimate chapter of the Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes with Thales firing Javelins of Light at Shambhala in an attempt at Taking You with Me, and Rhea pulling a Heroic Sacrifice to stop them is fittingly dramatic… up until it slowly zooms in on Thales' body crushed under the rubble… sporting an incredibly goofy Jaw Drop expression.
• If you complete Mercedes and Caspar's paralogue on the Azure Moon route, you will get a bonus scene at the end of Chapter 20 in which Mercedes cradles her dying brother's head in tears. It's incredibly sad… except for the fact that Jeritza's voice still has the Death Knight filter applied to it despite his mask clearly being removed in the CG.
• Can be forced by the player thanks to DLC items—nothing says "unintentional comedy" better than sporting attire.
• Lysithea's A support with Linhardt is heavy in what the actual meaning of it is, namely Linhardt asking her about choosing to die young with a Crest, or remove it and live a normal life. However, the writers decided to have Linhardt go about this by using sweets as his metaphor for Lysithea's current situation, with him being serious when saying things like how if she tries to have both sweets, his way of saying she cannot both have a Crest, and have a normal life, it will poison and kill her. While some amount of Narm Charm was likely intended, given Lysithea is also confused at first, Linhardt's attempts to use sweets as a metaphor for something that heavy undermines the seriousness of the conversation enough to make his actual point harder to keep track of.
• Making someone the Dancer class can be this depending on the character, especially if they're more suited for direct combat and/or their character clashes with the Dancer class. Special mentions goes to the three house leaders, especially Dimitri, who still retains his Dancer class even during his radical change in demeanor after the timeskip, which will mean he somehow appears crazier than he's intended to.
• The loading screen tutorials can become this, depending on when they show in-between the route's storyline. For example: A tutorial about having tea time with your units (which specifically features Edelgard) can be largely ironic/darkly humorous if it shows up around the time of The Reveal that she was the Flame Emperor and is planning to wage war against the Church of Seiros, if playing any route but Crimson Flower.
• The reveal about the Flame Emperor's identity on the Blue Lions route can come across as very hilarious. During the reveal, Edelgard's shown wearing an oversized helmet that just barely shows off her face, and her figure does not fit the Flame Emperor armor. It isn't much better on the Golden Deer route, where what could have been a great reveal through sheer shock value is derailed by their helmet just unceremoniously vanishing into thin air without even the dignity of a proper movie.
• While they can be a Tear Jerker, character deaths can be this. When a character dies on the battlefield, the battle music abruptly stops and switches over to a somber tune as the dying character gives their final words. While tragic, this can also have the side-effect of veering into becoming melodramatic if the player didn't actually bother to build a relationship and get to know the character who died, particularly on a first play-through of the game. Granted, the fact that defeated characters only die after the Time Skip lessens this effect.
• Related to the above, losing too many of your units can result in unintentional comedy when cutscenes are reduced to just Byleth and the route's plot-protected units addressing an empty room, making it look like the characters have lost their grip on reality and are talking to the walls.
  • To make it even more awkward, the characters who can survive doesn't have any lines talking about their fallen friends, which means they don't have any reaction at all when they lose one of them. The most egregious case is in Azure Moon chapter 16, where Dedue will enter a few turns into the battle (if his paralogue was completed), having been believed by Dimitri and the others to be dead. Should Dedue fall in the same chapter, the story carries on like nothing happened.
• Anytime someone says that Byleth somehow has a connection the goddess becomes ridiculous if they're dressed in the Sothis regalia. It just makes everyone look incredibly dense when the answer is glaringly obvious. Especially Macuil and Indech—they observe that they can sense Sothis' power within Byleth, but decide they should try to test it to make sure anyway.
• Dimitri's pre-timeskip greasy, noodle hair. It can be hard to take him seriously as a pristine, sensible person when he looks like he wore a headband for too long, or can't find a good hairstylist. It actually gets worse in his post-timeskip look because his hair looks even more greasy. That combined with his new personality has the fans jesting that he doesn't bathe enough.
• Like the above, Lorenz and Leonie's pre-timeskip hair has also drawn jokes in the fandom, being compared to a melon and a pumpkin, respectively.
• Owing to the fact that the majority of characters share the same animations, we have Hapi using Hilda's, which sometimes happen during otherwise serious scenes, like Hapi telling Dimitri how she was experiment on as a child whilst twirling her hips and swaying from side to side.
• Randolph and Ladislava's deaths during the protection of Garreg Mach on Crimson Flower are meant to be seen as a terrible, tragic thing that reminds Edelgard of the terrible costs of war—but not only are they one-note NPCs who are only there for three chapters and do nothing of importance, they also die offscreen. Edelgard does get to have a final conversation with Randolph, but because it's done with the in-game cutscene graphics, she's filmed standing from the waist up and he isn't visible, so she looks like she's giving a tender, heartfelt sendoff to nothing in the most perfunctory way possible. Compare this to their deaths in the other three routes; Randolph's death in particular has more impact on Azure Moon than it does on the route where he was the player's ally.
  • Related to Randolph’s death in Azure Moon comes the subplot where his sister Fleche joins Dimitri’s army to kill him in revenge. Unfortunately, her attack is nullified by an unflattering still image that makes Dimitri look like he’s about to fall asleep.
• Dedue's name is hard to take seriously, thanks to how closely it sounds like "doo doo". Just hearing his name spoken can cause inappropriate giggling in the game's more dramatic moments.
• No character has a dedicated turning animation, instead doing a single stepping animation while the model rotates. This isn't so bad, or even noticeable, when the game is playing a normal or humorous scene since the characters are often looking at each other and turning away is often done quickly, but sometimes during somber and emotional scenes the game will try for a slow, dramatic turn around and it looks like the character is just spinning in a microwave.
• During Hubert's B Support with Edelgard, he briefly takes on a much deeper voice when recalling how his father scolded him for allowing Edelgard to be injured, While Edelgard's Brief Accent Imitation of Hubert in her B support with Byleth, as well as Ferdinand in her C support with Ferdinand are humorous, this is meant to be a serious moment, but it comes off as ridiculous and makes one wonder how deep Marquis Vestra's voice is.
• The narration at the start of each chapter. In contrast to his committed performance as Jeralt, David Lodge sounds absolutely bored out of his skull when reading these lines.
• While Felix and Mercedes’ C-Support is mostly sad, Felix’s line at the very end is not, being something so ridiculously dark and overly cheesy that it sounds like something Shadow would say:
  Felix: I am me-Felix Hugo Fraldarius. There is no one else.
• In chapter 9, there will be a little girl from Remire Village in the mess hall who is devasted over losing her parents to the tragedy that happened and asks Byleth why they couldn't have arrived sooner. All while her profile picture shows her with a big smile on her face.
• The majority, if not entirety, of the Cindered Shadows side story suffers from this due to no new full cutscenes being made for it. As a result, all cutscenes are done in-engine, meaning the characters stand around in stock poses and animations, talking about what's happening instead of showing it. The only exceptions are when we get to see a still image of the scene, which aside from sticking out like a sore thumb, doesn't happen often enough to keep the intended feeling of the scenes.
  • Even the final boss's transformation is done by fading to black, showing a still image of it, and then focusing on the characters casually standing around as they react.
  • A particularly bad offender is when Yuri reveals his grand plan to Aelfric, that he had been playing along with his plan for years while secretly working with Rhea, and that the Knights of Seiros have gone to free the hostages that gave Aelfric his leverage. This is all revealed in standard dialogue boxes as Yuri stands in his usual idle pose, coming across as just an obligatory info dump. And immediately afterward, when Aelfric begins the ritual and is draining away the Ashen Wolves' blood and life force, the only thing that changes is some red effects in the background as the characters still stand as casually as they do in any other conversation.