Plucky Girl / Video Games

Video Games

• In Bear & Breakfast, Anni is described as "brave, but clumsy" as she and her friends set off for adventure. She keeps her head up high and hopes to sniff out goodies along the way.
• BlazBlue:
  • While a number of girls qualify for this in some shape or form, Makoto Nanaya clearly stands head and shoulders above the rest. If she can stand to rebuild a positive outlook on life in the wake of a lifetime of wall-to-wall Fantastic Racism, you're going to need some heavy ordinance to break her down - physical injury, financial woes, mind games, a trip through the Boundary, and Yuuki Terumi's mental penis don't work.
  • To a much lesser but constantly increasing extent, Noel Vermillion. She began as a Shrinking Violet with huge issues, but after the events of Continuum Shift and leading up to Chrono Phantasma, she seems to have taken a few levels in badass and developed a more assertive but still kind personality. And as her best friend, Makoto helped her quite a bit. So yeah, try stopping her from saving her other best friend Tsubaki . Try it.
• Maria Renard from Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, doubled as a Badass in Distress. Right after being freed, you can control her all the way from where she's held captive to beat up Dracula all by herself and her pets (which is a case for most people anyway, since she's stronger and faster than Ricther.)
• Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening:
  • Sigrun is unusually cheerful for being a member of a group of Death Seekers with the goal of achieving a Heroic Sacrifice, joking that she'll try harder next time whenever she gets through a battle. During party banter with Nathaniel, she states that being Wangsty about it doesn't really help her much, and demonstrates that it would just get annoying really fast.
  • Leliana in Origins lives through a tremendous amount of nasty stuff, yet comes out of it stubborn, courageous, and possibly the sweetest girl you will ever meet.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest IV: Princess Alena never lets anything get her down or stop her. Even though her kingdom has been destroyed and her father is missing, she is completely confident that she can find the culprit and punch it to death.
  • Dragon Quest V: It does not matter what happens to Bianca Whitaker (which includes being kidnapped and turned to stone right after giving birth to her children, and spending eight years as a statue before being rescued), she never loses hope that the Hero can defeat Nimzo, and she does not hesitate in rejoining her husband to fight the very monsters who tried to destroy her life.
• Fatal Fury, aside of all the girls who double as The King of Fighters Action Girls, adds ladies like Tsugumi Sendou and Hotaru Futaba. In The Movie, Kim's wife Myeungsuk also qualifies as such.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Krile from Final Fantasy V. She's already an orphan when you meet her. Then watches her grandfather die right in front of her. Then his spirit tells her she needs to take his place in defeating the warlock that just killed him. And she does, while still being cheerful enough to poke fun at the hero and pioneer the role that would appear in every numbered Final Fantasy after her.
  • Relm in Final Fantasy VI is a ten year old girl who talks smack to everyone and constantly gives her grandfather, Strago, grief. She's also a powerful magic user and she can sketch monsters in battle to use their abilities against them. Even after Kefka wrecks the world, Relm is still the same smart mouth optimist she always was and isn't totally fussed by the world being destroyed when you see her again.
  • Aerith from Final Fantasy VII. She had a pretty terrible upbringing as a flower girl in the slums, but she still maintains a feisty and flirtatious personality (but also a kind heart too), and she never backs down from anyone. Pretty hands on for the White Magician Girl too. Unfortunately this independent streak of hers ends in disaster when she takes the responsibility of bringing down Sephiroth on herself, leaves the party and is murdered by the man she was trying to stop. Given the final shot of the game before the credits roll though, that may have been her plan all along.
  • Tifa from the same game is strong case of this too. Her mother died when she was little and she fell off a rickety bridge at MT Nible convinced her mom was at the summit. Cloud, her crush left Niblehiem promising to become a legendary SOLDIER and come dashing to her rescue whenever she needed him, but she never saw him in the papers and he (seemingly) never returned. Then Sephiroth came to to inspect the town’s reactor, went nuts and burned everything down, killed her father and cut her down as well. Despite all this and losing her second home in Midgar a few years later, Tifa has remained strong as ever. She even provides moral support to Cloud and Barret without letting her own sadness show.
  • Selphie Tilmitt from Final Fantasy VIII. Her original home was destroyed, many of her friends were killed, the world was about to end, and she still maintained her plucky attitude and sense of humor. Worryingly, she's also always the first one to propose an excessively violent solution to a problem, such as skinning a Moomba to use as a disguise for escaping captivity.
    "Blow it to smithereens with a rocket launcher! BOOOOOM!"
• Fire Emblem gives us both female and male examples:
  • Linde from Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light and Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem. Alongside Maria, post-Heel–Face Turn!Minerva, Yumina, Lena, Elice, Tiki, Feena, etc. Gaiden adds Celica, Sonya, etc. Merric and Rickard are rare male examples.
  • From Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, we have several either in the White Mage or the Action Girl fields.
    • The first generation: Adean, Briggid, Tailto until she's horribly broken, Ferry, Mahnya, Raquesis, Sylvia and Ayra. Dew is The One Guy, sorta.
    • The second generation: Lana (and Mana), Patty (and Daisy), Fee (and Femina), Nanna (and Janne), Altena, Larcei (and Radney), Leen (and Laylea). On the enemy side, we have the Anti-Villain Ishtar. On the rare male example side, there's Corple (and Sharlow) and specially Seliph.
  • Fire Emblem: Thracia 776: The aforementioned Nanna alongside Mareeta, Tanya, Karin, post-Heel–Face Turn!Olwen, Sara, Safy, Lara, Tina, Eda, Linoan, Misha and Princess Miranda, with Evayle or better said, an amnesiac Briggid, Machyua, Selphina and post-Heel–Face Turn!Amalda as older versions. The Hero Leif and Asvel are rare male examples.
  • Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade:
    • Nino the Mage/Sage. Oh poor little innocent, sweet, freaking determined Nino.
    • Lyndis/Lyn, Louise, Priscilla, Serra, Farina, Fiora and Rebecca, too. A good part of Florina's Character Development comes from her doing what she can to become one. If you want rare male examples, look no further than Sain, Guy and Wil.
  • In Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade (set 20 years after The Blazing Blade) Princess Lilina is this and some more. Makes sense since her dad is Lord Hector and her mom can either be Lyn, Farina or Florina. Other than her, we have: Clarine, Ellen, Princess Guinevere, Thany, Thite, Lalum, Sue, Milady and Fir. Adult versions include: Echidna, Igrene, Cecilia and Niime. "Mayfly" versions include the dragon Fa rare male examples include Lugh, one of Nino's sons and The Hero Roy whose mom can be either Fiora or Lyn.
  • Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones:
    • Princess Tana. So plucky that she refuses to stay on the sidelines even when her brother Innes demands her to do so, helps both Eirika and Ephraim as much as she can despite her limited battle experience, can convince the very distraught Cormag to defect with words alone and hook up with him if they have an A support, and pulls Ephraim out of his Heroic BSoD after he sees that he can't bring Lyon back and loses one of the stones to him.
    • Eirika, too. Despite her naivete and seeing her kingdom and others go down, she keeps going on.
    • And L'Arachel, too. So plucky that she can bring Eirika out of an Heroic BSoD when she has to assume that Lyon's too far gone to be truly saved, after his Superpowered Evil Side uses him to steal the MacGuffin from her.
    • Also Natasha and Amelia. Both young ladies come from Grado, an Empire that is starting to invade and threaten other countries, but they decide to fight back and join Eirika and/or Ephraim's groups so they can save the world and Grado itself.
    • The rare male examples? Ewan and Ross; both begin as quite weak fighters but evolve into much stronger ones without losing their cheerful dispositions.
  • Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn: Mist, most prominently. Also to some extent Mia, Jill, Lucia, Elincia after her Character Development, Sanaki, Laura, Micaiah, Heather, Eda and others. The rare male examples are Rhys, Oscar, Rolf, Boyd, Geoffrey and specially Kieran.
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening:
    • A female Avatar (default name: Robin), Sully, Lissa, Maribelle, Nowi, Tharja (in a... strange way, that is), Cordelia, Sumia (who's normally more of a submissive badass), Emmeryn (specially when she fearlessly goes through an Heroic Suicide to stop an upcoming war, Say'ri and the grown-up Tiki. And maybe Ke'ri, if Lon'qu's testimony is to be believed.) Also the male Avatar, Prince Chrom, Stahl, Vaike, Henry, Donnel and Ricken as rare male examples.
    • From the second generation there's Sully's daughter Kjelle, Sumia's daughter Cynthia, Cordelia's daughter Severa, Nowi's daughter Nah, Tharja's daughter Noire (in her own way) and Chrom's daughter Lucina. And there are some rare male examples like Olivia's son Inigo and Lissa's son Owain. Oh, and Morgan counts in here whether as a boy or a girl unless they get corrupted by Grima after the death of his Avatar mom/dad.
  • Fire Emblem Fates continues the tradition with the Female Avatar (default name: Kamui or Corrin), Azura, Hinoka, Elise, Camilla, Mozu, Oboro, Selena aka an Older and Wiser version of the aforementioned Severa, Felicia, Peri (in a rather terrifying way), Effie, Hana, Reina, Kagero, Anna, Sophie, Ophelia and Soleil. The rare male examples include the Male Avatar, Silas, Leo, Arthur, Odin aka an Older and Wiser Owain, Laslow aka an Older and Wiser Inigo, Azama, Hinata, Siegbert, Asugi, Percy, Kiragi, Shiro and Forrest. And Kana counts whether as a boy or a girl too.
  • Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia fleshes out its once rather flat cast, and as a result many of the girls become this. The biggest examples are the female lead Celica and the cleric Silque, and they're joined soon by Faye, Clair, Mathilda, the Whitewing Sisters (Palla, Catria and Est), Mae, Tatiana, Sonya, Emma, Shade and Yuzu. There are also male examples: the male lead Alm, Gray, Tobin, Lukas, Clive, Forsyth, Atlas, Celica's half-brother Conrad, Jesse, Valbar and especially Leon.
• Ghost Trick: Lynne gets killed no less than five times in one night, but she'll be damned before that will keep her from laughing it all off with her cheerful theme tune every time Sissel has to go back in time to undo her deaths. And then there is the bravery she displays when she gets trapped in a sinking submarine with Kamila. Kamila couldn't wish for a finer protective older sister surrogate even if she wanted to try.
• The main trait of Kat the heroine of Gravity Rush, constantly upbeat and cheerful and actively enjoys being a hero. It’s revealed Kat’s former self was once weak and vulnerable but after falling to Hekseville and becoming a hero she is anything but weak.
• The title character of the freeware action/adventure Iji is a teenage girl who wakes up six months after an alien attack kills her family to discover that scientists have implanted nanotech in her to combat the invaders, but her only support is her little brother Dan, who has grown bloodthirsty, cynical and emotionally distant. Even after she discovers that humanity is on the brink of extinction and the earth is a charred husk, she presses on with the mission Dan gives her. This first quest fails miserably, the second makes the situation even worse, and, depending on the player's actions, Iji fails to save her brother from an assassin, which traumatizes her horribly. And yet she still carries on. The player can choose to play her as an Action Girl or pacifist; regardless, the final boss is awed by her determination.
• Kairi from Kingdom Hearts. She was prepared to take on Saix unarmed at one point, and Axel commented on her guts.
• The King of Fighters: The KOF: KYO manga/game has Kyo's girlfriend Yuki, specially when she stands up to Iori in the middle of a Go Through Me. Not halfway bad for a Barrier Maiden Girl Next Door.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Zelda in many of her incarnations is a courageous Plucky Girl, particularly her Skyward Sword, Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker versions. Even the extremely insecure Breath of the Wild Zelda shows a playful side and by the ending Took a Level in Badass by holding back Calamity Ganon.
  • Malon/Marin in both Link’s Awakening and Ocarina of Time displays these qualities. The OOT version in particular remains strong despite her ranch getting taken over by Ingo and her father Talon ousted out, only fearing over Ingo hurting the horses not her own safety. Malon’s Alternate Universe counterparts Cremia and Romani from Majora’s Mask are of the same mold, with Cremia putting up a brave face despite knowing the moon is gonna crash into Termia and kill everyone.
• From No One Lives Forever we get Cate Archer, superspy extraordinaire. Almost the entirety of UNITY believes a woman can't be a proper spy, her mentor is killed, every single agent has died before her, she's continually put on missions often promised to be simple but always end up extremely dangerous, and she's being sabotaged. Of course this doesn't stop her. She gets bonus points for having been a very successful cat burglar, starting out when she was just a teenager.
• Persona:
  • The female protagonist route added to Persona 3 in the PSP version turns the player character into one. The darker the game's plot gets, the more determinedly upbeat her dialogue options become.
  • All of the Persona 4 girls show different shades of this after their Shadows are dealt with. Special mention goes to Rise Kujikawa, who took control of her Persona, Himiko, right after the Shadow Rise fight.
  • And beating them all out is Maya Amano from Persona 2, whose catchphrase is "Let's think positive!" She remains upbeat throughout Innocent Sin, serving as a Team Mom for the group. Her pluckiness remains palpable even after she becomes a Heroic Mime when promoted to Protagonist in Eternal Punishment.
• Atari from Puyo Puyo!! Quest; no matter how many lemons are thrown at her, be it in the form of her boss' rather unreasonable expectations, her "clients'" odd requests or even just her own incompetence, she always keeps a smile on her face, remaining enthusiastic and ready for action.
• Recette from the game Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale fits this trope to a T. She's a young, naive, and overwhelmingly optimistic girl who, despite her desperate circumstances, is determined to make the best of them and is nice to most everyone (even people who previously tried to kill her!) She starts off the game in danger of being evicted from the only home she's ever known because her father irresponsibly ran off on an adventure and left behind a huge debt that she must now repay. In spite of this, Recette manages to keep a smile on her face and pay back her father's debts. She may act rather dumb at times and obsess over sweets, but ultimately Recette's infectious optimism and kindness is what wins her both customers and friends. Even the player cannot help but be endeared to her!
• Resident Evil:
  • Jill Valentine has shades of this. She’s lost most of her colleagues to a Mad Scientist’s deathtrap mansion, had her the city she swore to protect get infested with zombies and then nuked and then was captured, shoved in a tube and turned into a Brainwashed and Crazy Super-Soldier. Yet even after all that Jill is still willful as ever and just tells Chris to hurry up and save the world immediately after he brings her back to normal. Oh and last we hear from her? She’s stuck in hospital naturally recovering but still wants to get back in the field as soon as possible.
  • This is a central trait of Claire Redfield as well. A upbeat biking tomboy turned activist and welfare worker, Claire has gone through the Zombie Apocalypse, lost both her dearest allies Sherry and Leon to The Government, had her love interest Steve die in her arms and then the human-rights agency she works for turned out to be evil. But Claire like her older brother Chris hasn’t lost any of her righteousness and is the optimistic one of the Redfield siblings.
  • Sherry displays such qualities throughout RE6 despite being an orphan confronted with near literal hell on earth. Her legal guardian Derek Simmons even comments on Sherry’s constant compassion and optimism in a file... personally finding it absolutely intolerable and disgusting.
• Quite a lot of the female characters from the Soul Series. Nearly every female character who has ever appeared in a Soul game is either this trope, or an Ice Queen. Cassandra, Xianghua and Talim are this big time, Sophitia and Seung Mina were this in their earliest incarnations but grew out of it to eventually become other tropes, and in the most recent game Soul Calibur V, Pyrrha (specially when she manages to pull herself together after years of Break the Cutie), Yan Leixia (who runs away to both refuse an Arranged Marriage and to seek for adventure) and Natsu (Taki's pupil and one of Leixia's travel partners).
• Street Fighter:
  • Chun-Li. Oh my, Chun-Li. The first Action Girl in fighting game history simply can't be less. Followed by Cammy White, "Rainbow" Mika Nanakawa, Sakura Kasugano, Karin Kanzuki, Elena, Ibuki, Maki Genryusai, Makoto, Rose, Ingrid...
  • In regards to non-fighting female charas, Yun's Hot-Blooded "non-girlfriend" Hoimei is this; considering how calm she is when around her, her little sister Shaomei might count too. Eliza Masters can be considered to be an Older and Wiser version: she's not seen a lot but when she does appear she's almost always smiling and patient, and the mere fact that she's Happily Married to a dude who's very often fighting out there implies that she's got quite the patience.
• While most Toads from Super Mario Bros. are portrayed as Lovable Cowards, Toadette is portrayed as, well, brave and optimistic. Even in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, the initial reason why she was captured by Wingo was that she wouldn't let go of the power star she and the Captain found. Even then, this is only temporary.
• In Tears to Tiara 2 we have Charis. The little girl around seven or eight years of age right smack in the middle of a war, has to abandon her home, and witness destruction, atrocities, and quite a number of monsters. And she never gives up and never stops being cheerful. At Eburon Hamil is about to charge suicidally into the Imperial ranks for a chance to take Izebel with him, before Tart points out to him Charis is going to follow him on his suicide charge, all cheerful and smiles. He stops himself to not get her killed.
• Clementine from The Walking Dead (Telltale) starts off as one, as scared of her situation as a child would be but maintaining a mostly optimistic attitude. On top of just coloring pictures, she contributes to the group every now and then, finding the boat in the shed and possibly putting in her two cents on whether they should let Ben stay or not. Overall, she does fairly well for a child in the apocalypse. As things become more and more dire, however, her optimism runs out to the point until she's effectively jaded.