Video Game / Fuga: Melodies of Steel

Their fate is in your hands. ^note Left to right, front to back: Sheena, Malt, Mei, Kyle, Socks, Chick and Hack, Hanna, Wappa, Boron, Jin, with the Taranis in the background. Not pictured: Britz. Art by Nobuteru Yûki.

"That’s right… We have to fight! If we don't, everyone from the village will be taken away!"

—Malt

Fuga: Melodies of Steel (「戦場のフーガ」, "Senjō no Fuga", lit. "Fugue on the Battlefield" in Japan) is a turn-based RPG developed and published by CyberConnect2 of .hack, Asura's Wrath and Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot fame, set in the Little Tail Bronx world alongside previous games Tail Concerto and Solatorobo: Red the Hunter, though taking place long before either title. The game was released on all major platforms on July 29th, 2021, with a free demo containing the game's first three chapters being released on July 14, 2022, nearly a year afterwards. As of September 15, 2022, the game can be played through Xbox Game Pass.

In the Free Lands of Gasco, a floating landmass inhabited by anthropomorphic dogs and cats called Caninu and Felineko, there exists a peaceful remote village known as Petit Mona. The neighboring Berman Empire, despite Gasco's historical neutrality, has begun a campaign to annex much of its land. Of course, Petit Mona is too remote to be of any use to the invading army… but one night, the Berman lay waste to the village, proceeding to capture and abduct nearly all of its inhabitants, loading them onto air transports destined to who-knows-where.

As all this is happening, however, local shepherd boy Malt Marzipan and his little sister Mei are guided to safety thanks to a mysterious voice on the radio. Meeting up with their friends Hanna, Boron, Socks and Kyle, the six follow the radio voice's instructions to seek refuge in a mysterious cave at the edge of the forest— one that adults like Malt's grandparents have discouraged the kids from exploring in the past— and one which houses a mysterious giant tank: the Taranis, a relic from a civilization lost to time.

The children, having no other options, reactivate and take control of the Taranis to have a chance of getting their loved ones back, experiencing its destructive power first-hand when it makes quick work of the surrounding Berman forces. With time, several other lost children join the crew on their journey, all of whom are just as dedicated to saving their own loved ones and taking down the Berman Empire's scourge.

In contrast to the Action-Adventure nature of the Little Tail Bronx games preceding it, Fuga is a Turn-Based Strategy game in where you control the Taranis' weapons systems, with the aim to have the best set-up between each weapon and the skillset of the character controlling it, and exploiting enemy weaknesses to certain weapon types in battle to delay their turns and shift the outcome in the player's favor. One particular weapon you can use in boss battles is the Soul Cannon, a Wave-Motion Gun that could turn the tide of battle… but to fuel it, one of the children must sacrifice their own life…

Aside from that, the player can explore the Taranis and spend time getting to know each of the children and watching them interact with one another, and can play side-missions that involve exploring ruins or dungeons for hidden treasures. However, the player must be careful to manage their time and resources wisely, be they on the battlefield or not.

The game is directed by series veteran Hiroto Niizato, has series newcomer Yoann Gueritot as the creative director, and has characters, vehicles and locations designed by Yusuke "Shimipan" Tokitsu of Asura's Wrath fame, with returning talents from Solatorobo: Red the Hunter including writer Yasuhiro Noguchi and CyberConnect2 music label LieN (made up of composer Chikayo Fukuda and vocalist Tomoyo Mitani). The game is notable for marking CyberConnect2's 25th anniversary Milestone Celebration, as well as being their first self-published title (whereas Bandai Namco Entertainment published prior Little Tail Bronx games). The official website can be found here, with supplementary content (such as the Comedies of Steel humor motion comics) available on CC2's YouTube channel. An overview trailer for the game can be found here.

A sequel to the game, simply titled Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2, was officially revealed alongside a teaser trailer on July 28th, 2022, and released on May 11th, 2023. A major quality-of-life update for the original Fuga was also announced and released on March 29, 2023. A manga adaptation for the games known as Senjō no Fuga: Steel Melody^note A combination of the English and Japanese names for the game by Beyblade: Metal Fusion creator Takafumi Adachi has also been published on Famitsu's Japanese website every other week, with developer commentary and interviews also being regularly featured on the website. As of January 2024, English translations of this manga will start to be released on Amazon Kindle.

By the way, kids: eat your raclette.

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PRÉPAREZ-VOUS AUX COMBAT!
- Tropes Start -

• 100% Completion: Fulfilling all the necessary requirements (represented by gears on the right side of the title screen that turn orange to show your progress) nets you a secret movie that shows the rough outline of how the story for Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 would go down. Initially, the movie was entirely in unsubbed Japanese, but it's since been patched to have subtitles. Watch here.
• Absurdly High Level Cap: Each of the twelve kids can reach Level 99, but it's incredibly impractical to reach that point as you'll most likely have everyone at around level 40 by the last chapter, and trying to hit the cap requires multiple repeat playthroughs.
• Adaptation Deviation: In the animated comic "How It All Began", which roughly recounts the game's prologue, Malt's grandparents tell him to go the mountain cave where the Taranis is. In the game, it's the Radio Woman that tells him this. Also, the comic has Malt and Mei stumble upon the Taranis earlier and Socks recognize it as such when they enter the cave again, neither of which is the case in the game proper.
• Adults Are Useless: Downplayed. A majority of the adults you encounter in the different villages can help you by giving you items, but not much else. It's Justified following the ending cutscene of Chapter 10, in which the game states that being held captive and forced to do menial labor for so long has took a toll on them, forcing the kids to fight on their own once again.
• Advanced Ancient Acropolis: The origin of the Taranis is lost technology from a previous civilization, a running theme in the Little Tail Bronx setting.
• Aerith and Bob: The Taranis crew is made up of some fairly common names like Mei, Hanna, Kyle, Sheena, and Jin, alongside names like Malt, Boron, Socks, Hack, Chick, Wappa, and Britz.
• After the End: A two-for-one, as not only does the game take place after the World War that ended humanity (which is described in detail through Jeanne's archives on New Game Plus runs), but the ending retroactively reveals that everything that happened in Solatorobo took place on the floating remains of Gasco.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The children have varying viewpoints on this in regards to the Berman. Some of them, especially Jin, aren't particularly shy about proclaiming their disdain for the Berman, while others like Hanna reflect on the likelihood that not every Berman is evil and hope the war can end so both sides can live in peace. It's also a major focus of Britz's role in the story.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • If your team composition isn't how you'd like it based on the enemy team (for example, you have two grenade launchers and one machine gun, but the opponent is only weak to cannons), you're allowed to alter which weapons are active on your turn before you make a command. This way, instead of being boned right out the gate, you have a moment to change guns to prepare for the onslaught. This does come with the Necessary Drawback of having to wait three turns before you can change composition again.
  • For colorblind players, as discussed in this tweet by the game's director. Aside from shades of red (cannon), yellow (grenade launcher) or blue (machine launcher), the delay indicators and weapon icons also have different numbers of dots next to them to indicate what weapons should be used to delay enemy turns.
  • Even if every hit from a "Piercing" skill misses an enemy or doesn't do any damage to them, it will still reduce their armor rank.
  • On the first New Game Plus run, characters coming after the starting six will have their EXP artificially boosted to a certain level, allowing them to catch up quicker.
  • As of Version 1.50, failing to get the Golden Ending will give players access to a special Retry Mode, where instead of starting at the beginning, the game sets you back to Chapter 7, with all EXP and affinity levels kept, making the grind less tedious.
• Anyone Can Die: Should you opt to use the Soul Cannon.
• Apocalypse How: Class 0 - Regional. The awakening of Vanargand alone destroys Paresia as the city was above where it was sleeping. The subsequent rampage sunders the entire country of Gasco into an archipelago of multiple islands, which Hax soon attempts to destroy out of rage as the Taranis overpowers him.
• Arc Words: The Nono chant of "rin-sayara, rinaru-sa" makes a return from Solatorobo: Red the Hunter.
• Artifact of Doom:
  • With the cast ranging from the ages of four to twelve, utilizing the Taranis is their only real means of fighting against the Empire. Malt does, however, find its sheer destructive power unnerving during the kids' first outing, and in the "How It All Began" comic, he even continues to call it "God" despite no longer believing it to be one.
  • And of course, the Vanargand, this game's resident Titano-Machina.
• All There in the Manual: The character bios on the Japanese version of the site and official Twitter page state each character's breed, in addition to their age and species, which for some reason is absent from the English bios. The only exceptions to this are Gasco Army officers Merlot and Muscat, whose breeds aren't stated even on their Japanese bios, implying them to be mixed breeds.
• Ascended Meme:
  • One popular question circulating internet groups has them wondering why the kids aren't capturing Berman soldiers to use them as fuel for the Soul Cannon. An episode of Comedies of Steel would reference this in the skit "Set Your Soul Ablaze!", which has Jin maniacally suggest that tactic... only to get knocked out by a very angry Hanna.
  • According to Yoann, it was not uncommon for people to sacrifice Boron to the Soul Cannon for their first choice during the tutorial, a joke that heavily circulated the fandom coming up to the game's release. When the manga got around to adapting the tutorial's use of the Soul Cannon, they chose Boron as the one to go.
• Background Music Override: The first chapter's background music is "March in the Storm", which continues playing through battles and their results music. The final chapter's background theme works similarly.
• The Battle Didn't Count: The first encounter with the Tarascus turns out to barely leave a scratch on it, and General Hax shrugs it off.
• Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Zig-zagged. Some characters wear shoes (Malt, Kyle, Boron, Socks, and Britz), while others (Mei, Hanna, the Montblanc twins, Sheena, Jin and Wappa) don't, while otherwise being fully dressed. This also applies to the NPC villagers, as seen in the artbook that comes with the Deluxe Edition. Justified as the characters mostly live in a rural environment, and members of both the Gasco Army and Berman Empire all have some kind of footwear.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation / Dub-Induced Plot Hole: Some of these were present at launch, but were fixed in more recent updates:
  • For unknown reasons, Colonel Pretzel is erroneously referred to as "General Pretzel" by Flam Kish twice (Chapter 5's pre-boss cutscene and Flam's first Berman Report) and Hax once (Chapter 8's post-boss cutscene). In the Japanese version of Chapter 5's pre-boss cutscene, Flam refers to Pretzel as "Pretzel-sama". In the latter two cases mentioned, both characters correctly refer to Pretzel as "Colonel Pretzel". This was fixed later on.
  • During the final chapter, Jeanne's two halves merge back into her original form, with her simply stating that the Vanargand's awakening "unified" them, leaving some players to believe the Girl of Light used the opportunity to take control back over the Radio Woman. The Japanese version has her clarify that the Vanargand's reawakening explicitly allowed her self-repair functions to work as intended and allow her to self-optimize into her original form, which also retroactively explains her odd behavior during the earlier fight with the Tarascus in Chapter 10.
  • Some relatively minor cases from the Berman Reports:
    • Pretzel's journal entries in the Japanese version note that Hax was once his second-in-command, and that Von Stollen and Von Baum were in charge of Gasco's "frontier" (remote regions). In the English version, Hax is vaguely described as having been a "mere aide", and the area of the two old generals is also vaguely described as "this area", which may lead a player to believe this referred to the province of Dale specifically. These were later retranslated to fix these omissions, with Pretzel describing Hax as his former "adjunct".
    • Flam's letter to her father in English says that she's grateful towards him for recommending that she join his garrison. This is stated with a different tense in Japanese, where Flam says that she would be grateful if he recommended her joining his garrison. She also tells Pretzel to keep her promotion to Lieutenant Colonel to himself due to it being unofficial. This was also fixed in a later update.
    • The final entry from the journal of Berman spy Spritz Strudel has the author refer to his children Britz and Frita by name in both English and Japanese, but he only refers to his wife Linza by name in the Japanese version. Again, a later update rectified this.
  • The sixth Jeanne Archive has a case where Jeanne describes the anti-Juno organization's original plans for large-scale weapons, with wording saying that these weapons were "immobilized" in the final tasting phase. In Japanese, it's clarified that the project for these weapons was immobilized rather than the physical weapons themselves, as in the project was frozen until further notice. Likewise, the second-to-last Jeanne Archive describes the boy hidden within the Taranis as Jeanne's "counterpart", while the Japanese version uses a less-specific "other half". The next game explores these points in more detail.
• Boss Warning Siren: Exaggerated. A warning siren is played every time combat is initiated, with a warning telling you to prepare yourself.
• Bowdlerization: Per this article, the Chinese Steam release of the game had some visual edits done to it, such as removing as much Latin text as possible (including CyberConnect2's own logo), repainting Hax's military outfit to be completely black and obscured, or editing out the skull features on Professor Burri's staff within the in-game Adventures of Sucre comic.
• Breaking Old Trends: Fuga is notable for having a lot of changes to the series' formula. It's the first Little Tail Bronx game to be made without Bandai Namco's involvement, the first game to ditch the Action-Adventure style gameplay for strategic turn-based RPG, the first to have a relatively grounded story as opposed to the more shonen-esque story set-ups of Tail Concerto and especially Solatorobo, and the first game to have more than one playable character.
• But Thou Must!:
  • In the tutorial, you have to send a child into the Soul Cannon in your initial encounter with Pretzel. Thankfully, the death doesn't stick, as the group's subsequent defeat against an ambush results in time mysteriously rewinding itself to just before the encounter. Subverted on New Game Plus runs, where the tutorial is removed, and you have more than enough damage output to put Pretzel on the tail end of a Curb-Stomp Battle fight.
  • At the Final Boss, unless all twelve kids are still alive, Hax can only be killed by someone sacrificing themself to the Soul Cannon. This one does seem to stick, though the following scene with Jeanne heavily implies that New Game Plus is another time rewind.
• Call-Forward: Since the game takes place a thousand years prior to Tail Concerto and Solatorobo: Red the Hunter, these are a given.
  • Professor Burri, the antagonist of The Adventures of Sucre comic strip, sports a suspiciously similar appearance to Fool. The story of "The Vanishing Key Arc" is centered around a medallion with a red dot in the center, albeit one connected to a pendant.
  • Some (but not all) of the areas the Taranis goes through are based off of locations in Solatorobo, with Vizsla, Shetland and Mau being particular examples. This isn't just referential, as those are the same locations as the ones in Solatorobo. As for some specific details taken from the Library entries:
    • Immediately east of Petit Mona and the Terre-Neuve Forest is the province of Dale. According to the Library, the province is known for its many windmills, and as such is affectionately nicknamed "Airedale".
    • Spino Lake is stated to be gradually growing in size with no signs of stopping. By the time of Solatorobo, said lake has grown to cover the entire island of which it sits upon, and the canal city of Spinon has been built on top of it.
    • Mont Pharaoh is the highest mountain in the Mastiff Central region, with the mining settlement of Pharaoh being built at the base of it. The Library also mentions that many merchants have begun moving into the area of Pharaoh to support anyone who wants to climb the mountain, likely helping it to grow to an even bigger size with time.
  • Malt and Socks' Link Events have the latter discuss the possibility of a bipedal tank, which will eventually become the DAHAK-AZI03 that his descendant Merveille will build and give to her son, Red.
  • Sheena's spell-casting powers strongly imply that her clan are the ancestors to the Paladin Clan from Solatorobo's backstory. Some of Sheena's chants when using her powers (such as "rinaru-sa" and "orly-loosa") match up with ones used by Elh in Solatorobo proper.
  • While traveling through the late-game area of Malamute, the children notice a sleeping giant in the background, with the Radio Woman saying that it's not yet time for it to awaken. It's Lares, a major antagonistic force in Solatorobo.
  • At the end of the game, Gasco is broken apart by the Vanargand from a singular floating continent into an archipelago of scattered islands. According to The Stinger of the Golden Ending, This new Gasco will eventually be renamed to "Shepherd" in honor of Malt and the children he led to victory.
  • The Stinger for the Golden Ending also shows Baion of Solatorobo, contemplating his plans some three hundred years before the events of that game. This is followed by the narrator alluding to "untold adventures yet to come" as the game ends on a still of Red's Trance form.
• Canon Foreigner: Out of nowhere, the manga introduces a new character, the "Maestro", who seems to be an All-Powerful Bystander rocking a Plague Doctor aesthetic. His introduction implies that the manga adaptation will soon become an Alternate Timeline to the main game rather than remain a direct adaptation.
• Cast from Lifespan: The Taranis' Soul Cannon, a powerful Desperation Attack that requires someone to sacrifice their entire life to use.
• Cats Are Mean: Averted with the children, among whom only Kyle can be considered anything close to mean and contrariwise, not all the Caninu in the group are the nicest either. Among the armies it's actually inverted, as the invading Berman army is made up entirely of Caninu with the exception of Blutwurst, whereas what's seen of the benevolent Gasco army is entirely feline save for their commander Merlot.
• Central Theme:
  • War Is Hell and hard decisions must be taken to persevere through it. Trust in your comrades and make good use of everything at your disposal.
  • Just how far will one go to save those they care about? Can peace truly only be attained through sacrifice? Both the playable children and Britz deal with this theme over the course of the story.
• Checkpoint Starvation: To prevent players from Save Scumming, the game lacks a manual save and only makes a permanent auto-save at the start of a chapter, right before an Intermission spot, and at the very end of the chapter. That means failing anywhere in the game can cause you to lose twenty to thirty minutes worth of gameplay, maybe more. It gets far more noticeable in later chapters when the maps start becoming longer.
• Children Forced to Kill: Given that Fuga is a war story first and foremost. After killing Pretzel the second time (It Makes Sense in Context), Malt and the rest of the kids come to realize the true horrors of war, and what must they must do to save their families.
  Malt: Guys… we just… killed someone…
• Climactic Music: The final chapter's travel and battle theme is "Burn, City Of Flowers", an orchestral rearrangement of "Flower on the Trails", as the children rush to stop a Kaiju from destroying their whole homeland.
• Combination Attack: Link Attacks, which can be activated once you obtain a duo's first Link Event. They are insanely powerful Area of Effect attacks that supplies an additional effect such as boosting your speed or attack, inflicting status effects, or recovering your HP and SP by a significant amount.
• Company Cross References:
  • The tone that plays before a reset following a Game Over is the "system anomaly" tone from the .hack series.
  • The sound played when the Link Gauge becomes full is the same as the one denoting a successful Quick Time Event in Asura's Wrath.
• Damaged Soul: A very minor case. When the clock is wound back after the Soul Cannon is used, whoever previously died from it will begin crying for a moment before recovering.
• Darker and Edgier: Far more than either Tail Concerto or Solatorobo; while the latter two were out-and-out (mostly) lighthearted adventure games with dog and cat people making up the entire cast, Fuga is a turn-based RPG about kids being self-conscripted into a war after Nazi expies kidnap their loved ones, forcing them to use a massive Artifact of Doom, where its strongest attack requires a user to sacrifice themselves to use it. Compared to Solatorobo in particular, the game also has a higher and much more explicit body count— named characters and innocent victims included— and unlike with Solatorobo and its supplementary material, most antagonistic characters permanently die without any chance at redemption. And while the game's more violent cases of death are still refrained from being shown on-screen, the game does still cross over slightly with Bloodier and Gorier when Britz is shown with his arm bleeding after his fight with the Taranis.
  • To reiterate, both Tail Concerto and Solatorobo have title screen themes which are adventurous with a hint of whimsy, whereas Fuga's starts out as a melancholic piece that becomes more militant and frantic. The game's art style is also far more muted and grounded compared to the more vibrant look of the two games before it.
  • And if the video game itself somehow isn't dark enough, the manga version crosses over even further with Bloodier and Gorier, as it shows in graphic detail how the Soul Cannon painfully guts and vaporizes Malt in order to gather his bio-energy.
• Debut Queue: You start with Malt, Hanna, Socks, Boron, Kyle and Mei for the first two chapters. Over the next few chapters, Hack and Chick, Sheena, Jin, Wappa and Britz join, in that order.
• Degraded Boss: The Chapter 8 fight against the Elwetritsch BX and Elwetritsch RX helicopters. The kids even lampshade that they're not much of a boss during the fight itself, and later on you may encounter the exact same fight while travelling a Dangerous Route.
• Determinator: It doesn't get much more determined than twelve inexperienced children choosing to fight in a war and combat an invading army all by themselves, all so they can get their families back. Or even beyond that, choosing to finish fighting the Berman and save the country even after their families are safe, and taking down a Kaiju at the end of it all.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • The mandatory tutorial for the Soul Cannon is entirely removed on New Game Plus runs, given how it's no longer necessary.
  • Because of Britz's boss fight in Chapter 11, he cannot be used for the Soul Cannon. If you save him, he can be used for the Soul Cannon during the Final Boss.
  • Sacrificing every child to the Soul Cannon and entering the Final Boss with the last two will result in an alternate ending. Averted if you enter the Final Boss with one remaining child and sacrifice them during the boss, however; the game simply treats it as if the children were all knocked out, and a regular Game Over happens.
• Disney Death: The first time you use the Soul Cannon doesn't stick, because the survivor's very next battle results in a Hopeless Boss Fight against an ambush, forcing 'mysterious powers' to turn back time just before the encounter.
• Distant Finale: The final scene of the Golden Ending takes place 700 years later after the shattered continent of Gasco was renamed "Shepherd" in honor of Malt and his friends saving the world, and a final moment shows Baion from Solatorobo reminiscing on what he plans to do next, before ending on a still of Red's Trance form.
• Downloadable Content: You can download extra costumes for the children through paid DLC. A swimsuit pack is bundled with the Deluxe Edition, while the School Uniforms, Samurai, and Fantasy themed sets are available as paid extras.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • The ending of Chapter 10 shows Britz pledging his loyalty to Hax in order to protect his family, so the Taranis crew will be more surprised by Britz fighting against them than the player. An additional layer of irony is added if the player is on the Golden Ending path, as the player and Taranis crew know Britz's family is actually completely safe before Britz does.
  • The final scene of the Golden Ending has Baion from Solatorobo look at Gasco's fractured remains, and remark how he may need to intervene because humanity's successors are just as flawed and prone to destruction as they were. However, the player knows that— while the Berman Empire was certainly committing crimes of its own volition— the conflict wasn't masterminded by a Caninu or Felineko, but Jeanne, a product of humanity.
• Dual Boss: Von Stollen and Von Baum are fought together in Chapter 3, and a later boss fight also includes a pair of heavy helicopters.
• Early Game Hell: Due to the railroading progressing on top of only being able to visit shops before you start each chapter, there's not a whole lot you can do in order to properly level up and farm materials for the battles to come early on, especially as branching paths are introduced and Elite Battles become a regular occurrence, with the Soul Cannon becoming a tempting option to use during boss fights. But as you find your groove in the starting rotations and gather enough materials to upgrade the children and Taranis to be an unstoppable force, then the agency behind using the Soul Cannon diminishes a lot, especially if you are able to breeze through the Elite Battles no problem. This is especially prevalent on New Game Plus runs, since Experience and upgrades are all carried over, and the removal of the tutorial in Chapter 1 lets you cut loose with how powerful the Taranis really is as you can steamroll Pretzel no problem.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: Achieving the worst ending where every child dies is arguably even more difficult than getting the Golden Ending where Everybody Lives. The Soul Cannon lets you win boss fights in one shot, but using it actually weakens you in the long run, as it gradually deprives you of people to man your turrets as well as their special skills — so while you can still beat bosses, actually getting to them becomes much more difficult, with the last few chapters leaving you with not enough people to even use all of your turrets.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Though it takes fighting in the war with little outside help, ending it just as well without much outside help, and Gasco being irreparably broken into pieces by Vanargand, the children do successfully save their families and prevent their country from being taken over or destroyed. They all get to return to at least some semblance of a happy life - even Britz, provided certain requirements are met - Berman signs an armistice to usher in an era of peace, and for the children's troubles they're honored as heroes among the entire nation, with it even being renamed to commemorate them.
• Eiffel Tower Effect: Egregiously, when visiting Paresia you can even spot what appears to be the Eiffel Tower in the background. Or not so egregiously if you know the setting's background - since Fuga is set on a post-apocalyptic Earth and Gasco is heavily implied to be located on land that used to be France, Paresia might as well be on the spot of the old Paris and it may actually be the Eiffel Tower.
• Epic Tank-on-Tank Action: You're piloting a giant super-weapon tank blowing up other tanks. It speaks for itself.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Gasco is based on World War II-era France (and the towns within the game occasionally reference their real-life French counterparts), with the Berman Empire acting as the counterpart to Nazi Germany. The game is so dedicated to the France setting that the only dub available besides Japanese is French, and the event graphics for battles, intermissions, explorations and success/failure for actions in the intermission are also titled in French— clearly indicating that it's the language spoken by the cast in-universe.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: The three weapon classes of the game roughly correlate to this. Cannon users tend towards high damage output (in Boron's case, he has defense and healing abilities that have him lean more towards being a paladin), Machine Gunners are the agile rogue-type class specialized for stripping away armor and dealing with pesky flying units, and Grenade Launchers typically learn a variety of status-inducing skills that make them the mages. Hanna and Socks especially are nearly one-for-one examples of a White Mage/Black Mage duo, with Chick being more of a Red Mage.
• Fighting Your Friend: Britz is manipulated to fight against the children, believing that his family will be hurt if he doesn't abide to the Berman Empire.
• Fission Mailed: Happens in the tutorial, where the kids become so distraught following the Soul Cannon's firing that they opt not to do anything and let themselves be killed by Berman forces. This is done to teach you how continues work in this game.
• Flunky Boss: Several bosses can summon additional units as backup, including the final boss.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Following the Soul Cannon tutorial and the time rewind to just before the first intermission, Malt is shown to have a faint memory of either himself or his friends being sacrificed to the weapon. This foreshadows how in the second game, Malt is revealed to have similar powers to Jeanne and can use them to mildly warp time and reality to benefit him and his friends.
  • The second Berman Report (an entry from Colonel Pretzel's private journal) describes that Shvein Hax's plans for the invasion of Gasco revolve less around the capital and more towards "the mountains far to the south". Come Chapter 10 and it's revealed that these mountains were where the "heart" of the "Lost God" was located.
  • In Chapter 4, the Berman soldiers that were chasing Sheena question if "that brat" is also on the Taranis, alluding to Britz and his role in rescuing Sheena.
  • An easy-to-miss example happens in Chapter 9: Britz tells Jin that the engine parts he salvaged from the Berman tank earlier may have exploded if he left it alone. After Flam Kish's tank goes up in flames— and she still insists on fighting the Taranis with little more than a gun— what remains of it blows up afterwards, killing her.
  • At the start of Chapter 10, the Radio Woman gets cheerful and chuckles that everyone "will all be reunited". At first glance, it seems she's talking about the kids and their families, but she's actually referring to her reunion with the Vanargand and its heart.
  • During the boss fight in Chapter 10, the Radio Woman begins to speak robotically and crash due to her contact with the Vanargand's core, with the Girl of Light acting more cognizant and taking the opportunity to put the Taranis in a defensive stance. Not only does this indicate that the two are connected in some way, but the final chapter reveals that these two were unconsciously trying to optimize back into their original form.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Each episode of Comedies of Steel usually provides focus on one (or more) of the main cast members living their lives within the Taranis. Every episode except the final one, which focuses exclusively on Baion, with the only reference to the main plot being a row of Berman tanks running over a flower right in front of him.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: During the Golden Ending, when Jeanne checks the Taranis' systems for an alternative to using the Soul Cannon, there's a brief flash of a helmeted figure in a chair.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Certain events or choices within the story clearly leave the children distressed, which is represented in-game with the Depression debuff preventing the child from being able to use Skills or Link Attacks in battle. For example, sacrificing certain children into the Soul Cannon will affect the one closest to them: Hanna's death will depress Kyle, Mei's will depress Malt, and Chick's will depress Hack. The fight with Britz in particular shows just how unwilling they are to fight their friend, as every child has a Depression debuff that lasts for the entire fight, with even the Soul Cannon itself being unusable.
  • Malt and Mei start off with half an extra level of affinity given their close sibling bond, and the Montblanc twins are similarly recruited with a full extra level. Wappa's chatty nature results in her starting off with an extra level of affinity with all the other kids. By contrast, Britz only has a level of affinity with Sheena, since only she holds any solid trust in him.
• Gameplay Grading: Every combat encounter is graded from E to S, based on how quickly it took you to complete, the damage you sustained and your technique (using special skills, link attacks and hitting enemies with the right attack types), with higher grades giving you more XP as a reward. Your dungeon ventures are also graded, with the score based on how many items you find.
• Genre Shift: Unlike how Tail Concerto and Solatorobo: Red the Hunter are bright and colorful Mega Man Legends-esque Action-Adventure platformers about exploring the world, Fuga is a turn-based strategy RPG with a muted color palette taking place within a war setting. Additionally, despite sharing the same scenario writer as Solatorobo, Fuga's style of storytelling tends to be more direct and linear, with less focus on greater world-building.
• Golden Ending: While it can be difficult, there's two conditions that a player needs to meet to get the best ending: NEVER use the Soul Cannon, and prevent Britz's sacrifice by ensuring he's gone through five or more Link Events with the other characters before he leaves the crew in Chapter 10. You'll know you succeeded when you get a cutscene of Britz showing you the picture in his pendant midway through Chapter 10, as this is how the children recognize his family members among the liberated prisoners later on.
• Gratuitous English: Not as bad as the trope below, but in the Japanese dub, Berman soldiers often say "Yessir!" in English all the same.
• Gratuitous French: Battles use French in their title cards, and the game's only alternate dub is in French, but humorously still performed by the same Japanese voice cast.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Wanna get past the fight against Britz without killing him? Then you better hope he's experienced at least five Link Events with everyone else on the Taranis. Also, you better make sure you go after and talk to him following the cutscene where he mentions his family. To rub it in, the game hints at this after you beat the final boss in the endings where not every child survives.
  • The game gives zero direct hints towards how to unlock the secret movie, which requires a number of ingame achievements including multiple playthroughs and specific number milestones listed under the gameplay stats.
  • A more minor example: neither this game nor the sequel mention the fact that you can use the right stick to pan the camera around during intermissions, which helps save time when trying to find other characters to talk to or the location of random free item spawns, although it's less useful in the first game due to the more zoomed-in camera.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: How the first fight with the Tarascus ends. Even after you deplete its health bar in gameplay— even if you use the Soul Cannon— the cutscene reveals the Tarascus to be completely unharmed, with Hax expressing disappointment with what the Taranis can do. Then he obliterates the entire Gasco reinforcements in one blow.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Should a child opt to use the Soul Cannon to save their friends from a battle going south. Deconstructed in the first battle against Pretzel; when the others learn that the sacrificed character used the Soul Cannon and what it truly entails, it leaves them in such despair that they're able to do nothing but defend themselves from an ambush from the Berman army. If the Pretzel battle is won a second time without using the Soul Cannon, the Radio Woman discusses this trope with them, telling them that they should only use it if the situation gets too dire.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Shortly after Pretzel's defeat (and a character sacrificing themselves to the Soul Cannon to win a battle that was otherwise going badly), the group get ambushed by a garrison of the Berman Army. However, thanks to the aforementioned sacrifice, and learning of the true nature of the Soul Cannon, the rest of the crew fall into despair (represented in gameplay as being unable to select any option other than "Defend") and the garrison makes short work of them. Thankfully, 'mysterious powers surrounding this world' bring the group, including the original victim of the Soul Cannon, back to just before the battle.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Has a music reference in its title just like previous Little Tail Bronx games. More specifically, a fugue is a piece of music where multiple parts each imitate the same subject melody at different pitches (often overlapping), giving the sense of different voices "chasing" each other in a call-and-response manner. The game itself follows the children's journey in chasing after the Berman and fighting them head-on to get their families back, hence the title.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • The title screen shows all of the children, and by the time you get all twelve children, the short cut-scene like stills that play whenever you do an interact in the Taranis change to fit all of them... except for one: Britz. This is because he's later manipulated to fight for the Berman Empire, and, if his affinity isn't raised to a certain level with the other children before his departure, will die after you defeat him.
  • Also, on Steam, the game gives out an achievement at the completion of each chapter, though this can risk spoiling the length of the game as the achievements aren't hidden.
• In Medias Res: The game's first chapter starts with the kids already fighting the Berman Army in the Taranis, before flashing twelve hours back to their normal lives in Petit Mona, followed by its invasion by the Berman Empire and the children's subsequent activation of the Taranis.
• It's the Only Way: When Soul Cannon becomes available as an option in boss battles (if the Taranis hits around 50% HP or lower), the Radio Woman will tempt the player to use it by insisting that it's the only option left. No pressure!
• La Résistance: Though they don't outright call themselves that, Malt and the others basically fill the role, liberating garrisons, freeing captive innocents, and mercilessly tearing the Berman Army a new one for their crimes.
• Level-Up at Intimacy 5: Every time the Relationship Values between two children reaches a new level, it boosts their passive skills when they're partnered together in battle. Additionally, watching a pair's Link Event at Affinity level 2 unlocks their Link Attack, with the second and third events (at Affinity 5 and 10, respectively) increasing its power.
• Mature Animal Story: The game is a tactical RPG about twelve Funny Animal Children Forced to Kill fighting in their version of World War II. While there's some reprieve in that the story is viewed through the kids' perspectives, various themes about the horrors of war, kindness in dark times, vengeance, racism, suicide and the loss of innocence are sprinkled throughout the game.
• Meaningful Background Event: In the backgrounds of the Terre-Neuve Forest (Chapter 1) or Vizsla's Kurilia Forest (Chapter 4), some abstract feather-like statues can be seen. As per Solatorobo: Red the Hunter, they're "Icons", sacred objects worshipped by those following the in-universe Anju religion.
• Militaries Are Useless: Justified, as over the course of the game, the kids lament that they can't afford to sit around and wait for the Gasco military to take action in such a time-sensitive situation. Gets Played for Drama in Chapter 10, when Hax completely decimates the Gasco army right as they arrive to aid the Taranis, using only a fraction of the Tarascus' power.
• Mix-and-Match Critter:
  • The "moosheep" Malt and Mei herd in Petit Mona, as seen in the beginning of the game, in one of the rooms of the Taranis, and also in promotional art and Episode 2 of Comedies of Steel, look like sheep with cow-like horns and fleece colors.
  • While not depicted in artwork, there are also clucken you can tend to in the farming section. As the name implies, they are some combination of chicken and ducks.
• Multiple Endings:
  • In the "normal ending" where at least one child has died, Jeanne realizes that the losing General Hax has ordered the Vanargand to destroy all of Gasco, and states that the Soul Cannon is their only option left to stop him. All of the surviving children volunteer, and once the player makes their choice on which of them to sacrifice, Hax and the Vanargand are soon obliterated. The Taranis, mangled from the resulting explosion, violently crashes into one of the floating islands, and the Gasco military quickly arrives to give the surviving children medical attention. Afterwards, the surviving children stand together and vow to remember their fallen comrades, and the game ends on a "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue where the deceased children are scribbled out. In The Stinger, Jeanne, her radio left among the wreckage, vows that she won't let anyone die "next time". Afterwards, the game gives hints to the player on how to gain the Golden Ending.
    • A slight variation of this ending occurs if you sacrifice every child to the Soul Cannon with the last one being used to finish off Hax. The Taranis will similarly be mangled and sent crashing into a floating island, but the Gasco military will notice it to be completely empty upon inspection, and choose to honor the children as nameless heroes.
  • In the Golden Ending where all twelve children have survived, the player is given a Last-Second Ending Choice on whether or not to use the Soul Cannon to finish off Hax, and if they choose not to use it, the children all express a refusal to give up, and their combined resolve becomes strong enough to fuel the Soul Cannon all by itself (even changing its color from dark purple to golden). After obliterating Hax, the Taranis survives the Vanargand's explosion with the children all coming out of it perfectly fine, and soon hailing the Gasco military to pick them up. Afterwards, the complete "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue with all the children is shown, and the Taranis is returned to the cave the kids originally found it in. In The Stinger, set seven hundred years in the future, a strange hooded man reflects on his upcoming plans for the "new world" and its denizens.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: The Berman Empire is a nation working to annex the surrounding lands in a violent and tyrannical manner, has a military almost entirely comprised of one "race" of Caninu (a fact that it seems to be proud of, given its name), and heavily utilizes black and red imagery. Just to drive the point home, nearly all of the named characters and units from Berman have German names.
• New Game Plus: After beating the game, you can start over with all the upgrades and progress you've made within the Taranis in order to fill in all the remaining parts of the Library. You're also hinted at how to obtain the Golden Ending if it had not been obtained. Some parts of the Library only unlock on a second playthrough, as well. You are also given access to "Turbo Mode" on NG+ runs, allowing you to progress through the different routes faster.
• Nothing Is Scarier: The Soul Cannon. The chamber itself is pulsating almost as if it's alive, and, should you use it, leaves no trace of the victim save for one memento that another member can find, making you wonder just what the hell it does to gather soul energy. Unexpectedly, the manga showed that what it does is gut and disintegrate the user until nothing but pure bio-energy remains.
• Point of No Continues: The entire game. Losing in any battle results in a restart back to before or after the last Intermission.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child:
  • The ultimate Desperation Attack in the Taranis' arsenal, the Soul Cannon. Although it is the single most powerful option the player has in battle, using it requires sacrificing one of the children. There exist items called "Dummy Souls" (one of which is included in the Deluxe Edition as a bonus item) which allow you to use the Soul Cannon once without sacrificing any of the children, but they seem to be exceptionally rare.
  • In the Golden Ending, there are hints dropped that the Taranis itself might be a case of this, as Jeanne's reports refer to there having been "a child" who was intended to pilot the tank back when it first fought Vanargand, and whose consciousness may be trapped within it.
• The Power of Friendship: This is what the children manage to harness after all their time together, and use it to power the Taranis at the very end of the game to fire the Soul Cannon to finish off Hax without having to sacrifice anyone.
• Prequel: Predates even Tail Concerto in the Little Tail Bronx timeline by roughly a thousand years. Early on, there are hints about this all over, such as the Berman airships looking like primitive versions of the ones seen in Tail Concerto. As the game goes on, this becomes more and more explicit. By the end, it's explained how the archipelago of Shepherd, the setting for Solatorobo, is formed.
• Prescience by Analysis: The final entry in Jeanne's files implies that the game's events are not happening per se. Instead it is a simulation, with Jeanne trying to use the powers of the Juno to predict the upcoming events and calculate the best possible outcome for everyone involved as well as what she needs to do to reach it. This also explains how the time is getting reversed at certain moments in the story or when you get a Game Over - it's not actually getting reversed, instead Jeanne is rolling back the simulation to an earlier point and trying things differently.
• Punny Name:
  • As with the previous game's localization, "Caninu" and "Felineko" are portmanteaus of Latin and Japanese words used for dogs ("canine" and "inu") and cats ("feline" and "neko").
  • The Berman Empire (aside from the familiar name) is made up entirely of Doberman Pinschers.
  • The home village of the initial six kids, named Petit Mona, translates from French to "Noble Little One". Fitting given what their role in the story is.
• Putting on the Reich: Among many things about the Berman Empire that mirror Nazi Germany is the design of their military uniforms.
• Rearrange the Song: In Sheena's Comedies of Steel episode, the background music is a variation of Mau's theme from Solatorobo: Red the Hunter. Likewise, the music for Baion's episode references the game's main motif, "And Then, To CODA".
• Recurring Boss:
  • Of a sort. While Colonel Pretzel dies after his boss battle in Chapter 1, Flam uses the same tank model as him, just with a different paint job and name^note Pretzel's tank was known as Sigurd, while Flam's is known as Swanhild. As such, her boss battle is essentially a stronger variation of his. Additionally, Flam herself is fought twice, in Chapters 5 and 9.
  • Hax is also fought twice — first at the end of Chapter 10, and the second time as the Final Boss.
• Relationship Values: During Intermissions, you can explore the Taranis and build bonds between the kids which play out in visual novel-styled skits known as "link events". Building strong relationships between the duos manning the turrets is key to the battle element of the game, as it powers up their passive skills and Link Attacks.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: The Taranis is named after the Celtic god of thunder. Conversely, the Tarascus is named after Tarrasque, a dragon of French folklore; Managarm, Tarascus' capital weapon, is named after Managarmr, a son of Fenrir from Norse mythology; and Vanargand is another name of Fenrir himself. All fitting names for super-weapons.
• Removed from the Picture: If a child sacrificed him or herself to fire the Soul Cannon is supposed to be seen in an event image later on, they'll be completely covered by a moving black squiggle.
• Retcon: An All There in the Manual example from the Little Tail Bronx Archives. The "Daybreak" artbook for Solatorobo: Red the Hunter describes the Reset that transformed Earth into the series' current setting as happening three thousand years before the game's events and thus two thousand years before Fuga. The artbook for Fuga adds two millennia to this number, pinpointing it as happening four thousand years before the events of the game (and thus five thousand years before Solatorobo). This may have been undone as of Chapter 22.5 of the manga where the history of Belenos is revealed, returning to the claim that the event happened two thousand years before.
• Revision: Regarding a lore detail from Solatorobo. The Statues of the Upside-Down Wolf in Mau were, in the original game, possibly implied to have been erected during the Hundred Lilies War mentioned in the game's library and supplementary materials, as a way for the Lion Tribe to gain a strategic advantage over the Wolf Tribe. Fuga however reveals that these statues— along with the very enmity between the Lions and Wolves— already existed centuries before even that conflict occurred.
• Sentimental Homemade Toy: When you rescue Sheena, all she has left is her life, her unwanted magical powers, and Bleuette, the doll her mother made for her.
• Save Scumming: Defied. The game auto-saves before and after each Intermission, which are not only few and far between, but dying will also set you back to either point of the Intermission. If you're at a standstill and select "Return to Title", then the game will make a quick save that will bring you back into the action when loading the game up again. However, said quick save will also delete itself after loading it, preventing players from calling mulligan on a difficult fight.
• Series Continuity Error: The Stinger for the Golden Ending has Baion discuss how he doesn't remember his name or his Order, indicting that the scene happens just before the events of the "Ragdoll Elegy" side-novel for Solatorobo: Red the Hunter— where Baion finds the Bérius near Ragdoll and regains his name and purpose. However, the leg of the Bérius is already shown in the foreground of this very scene.
• Sequel Hook: The secret movie obtained through fulfilling the ingame requirements to unlock it teases the game's follow-up. In it, some plot points are given away like the Taranis going haywire and the children having to board the Tarascus to fight it, a character implied to be Malt vowing to kill someone out of revenge, and something involving the child briefly seen in a flashback in the Golden Ending.
• Sequential Boss: The Tarascus is this, with Hax switching up his weapons throughout the fight, moving from machine guns to grenade launchers to finally cannons as the Tarascus' health gets depleted.
• Show Within a Show: The Adventures of Sucre, a newspaper comic you get a segment of before every chapter.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Taranis has far more than just a passing resemblance to Howl's moving castle.
  • All of the chapter titles barring the first (most obviously, "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun") take their names from the compositions of Claude Debussy.
  • Game director Yoann Gueritot has stated that he named de-facto protagonist Malt Marzipan after Willow's Madmartigan, mostly because it sounded cool.
  • The Adventures of Sucre is an obvious parody of Tintin.
    • At one point during the comic, the character Miella attacks the villain Professor Burri by jumping in the air and headbutting him in the back.
  • At one point, Hack offhandedly mentions a comic called "Lil' Paws", a sly reference to Peanuts' predecessor, Li'l Folks.
  • If this tweet is any indication, Hack's squat animations during the intermissions are a shout-out to one Zack Fair.
• Spoiler Cover: The cover and menu screen show all the children you'll eventually recruit over the course of the game… except for Britz, hinting at his forced betrayal and possible demise should you not meet the requirements to save him.
• Stealth Prequel: Zig-zagged. It was stated in the game's announcement that the game would be set in the same Little Tail Bronx universe and take place prior to every other installment in the series, but what wasn't revealed is that this game's setting of Gasco is in fact Shepherd prior to being broken up into the archipelago it would be seen as in Solatorobo: Red the Hunter, Sheena's people are heavily implied to be the predecessors to the Paladins, and Socks is the distant ancestor of Merveille— and by proxy, all the hybrids she helped create, including Red himself.
• Subsystem Damage: Some boss fights include this — Pretzel's and Flam's tanks include a control tower that, if left unattended, will keep restoring the main body. Depleting its health causes it to get retracted, but it will recover on its own and return to fight in time. The Tarascus fights are also built around this, with Managarm having its own health bar and initiative. It will spend a few turns charging up and if you don't destroy it in that time it will fire off a massively-damaging attack, then regenerate in full, denying your progress. If you manage to take it down, however, it will stay inactive for the remainder of the phase.
• Tank Goodness: The centerpiece of gameplay itself, the Taranis. Even after years of disrepair, the tank works like a dream, and the kids pick up how to manage and use its weapons systems right away, becoming a formidable foe against the forces of the Berman Empire.
• Theme Music Power-Up: The first part of the game's main theme song, "Flower on the Trails", plays during boss fights against story-critical Berman officers (soldiers in boss tanks instead use the standard "Beyond Our Sight"). The full version of the song plays during the Final Boss.
• Token Heroic Orc: Britz and his family's role in the story; even the more open-minded kids barring Sheena are reluctant to let Britz join them, and he understands why they'd feel that way, since he also doesn't have much love for the Berman side due to suffering much hardship under their regime. But ultimately, especially if certain requirements are met, he proves to be a genuinely benevolent person who represents the good side of Berman that the rest of the army doesn't display, and the other children come to accept him for it.
• Trash the Set: Gasco gets sundered into an series of floating islands in the finale due to the Vanargand's awakening, with the city of Paresia being destroyed in the beast's explosion.
• Turn-Based Combat: The Taranis has three turrets, which are manned by teams of two children which make up essentially one unit in battle. The main kid determines the type of gun used while the support character provides backup skills.
• Unperson: Anyone who is sacrificed to the Soul Cannon is crudely removed from any CG depicting them, creating increasingly more scary images on a run where you excessively use the Cannon.
• Unstable Equilibrium: The "Soul Cannon" is a Limit Break that can win any battle in one hit. It is also Powered by a Forsaken Child, and every time you use it, it permanently removes one of your party, which reduces your options for winning battles without it.
• Video Game Caring Potential: There's lots of things you can do to take care of the kids, like improving the relationships between them or taking care of them if they're depressed or injured. Ultimately however, the biggest judge of how much you care about the kids (individually, at least) depends on...
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Using the Soul Cannon, full stop. It's an One-Hit Kill for every single boss encounter, but you permanently lose one of the children, and can end up, when you get to the Final Boss, with there being a special ending, only possible by going into the Final Boss enconter with two children, one of which you sacrifice to the Cannon before the scripted event.
• War Is Hell: Being an analogue of wartime-era France, this game doesn't shy away from the trauma the children gain from having to kill enemy soldiers. It also features themes such as the execution of prisoners, dehumanization and persecution of certain groups, unethical experimentation, and the indoctrination of people into following dangerous ideologies.
• Wave-Motion Gun: The Soul Cannon. A life must be sacrificed to use it but in return it obliterates everything in its path, taking down any enemy in one shot, including a mountain-sized Kaiju. The Tarascus is also equipped with one, which is only marginally weaker — while the Taranis can survive a blast from it, the same cannot be said about the whole Gasco army. The Managarm also seemingly does not require a living sacrifice to fire it, given how it works instead by charging up energy.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 7, "The Moon Descends Upon the Temple That Once Was": not only is the crew completed with Britz joining, the full extent of Doktor Blutwurst's wicked experiments are revealed— mainly that he was painfully draining Mau's Felineko population of their Nono and abundant Bio-Energy to create "Bio-Batteries" for General Hax's plans to "revive the heart of the Lost God", resulting in many of them being rendered comatose or dead outright.
  • Chapter 10, "The Council of the False Gods", features the most twists in the story: the kids finally come into contact with General Hax, who reveals the Tarascus, a tank powered by the recently excavated "heart" of the "Lost God" known as the Vanargand, and reveals not only that the Taranis' presence brought the "heart" back to life, but indirectly notes that the Radio Woman guided both the Taranis and him to come into conflict with each other. Hax then promptly uses the newly-activated Tarascus to fight the Taranis to a standstill and vaporize the Gasco Army reinforcements in one shot. Afterwards, the kids finally succeed in rescuing their families, but Britz sneaks away to rejoin the Berman Army for the purpose of protecting his mother and sister.
  • Chapter 11, "Forgotten Songs": Britz fights the heroes as the chapter's boss. Unless you fulfill the required conditions, he's Driven to Suicide and kills himself with explosives. Regardless of whether he survives or not, the chapter ends with the Radio Woman revealing her true identity: Jeanne, the damaged AI of the Taranis, who spread a false legend to the people of Berman about the Vanargand being a "Lost God", with the aim of goading them into reawakening it so that she could fight it again.
  • Chapter 12, "From Dawn to Noon on the Sea": Shvein Hax successfully reawakens the Vanargand, resulting in Jeanne being restored to her true form and revealing the past history of the Taranis and the Vanargand, as the children and Hax head towards their final showdown.
• Wham Line:
  • In a cutscene midway through Chapter 7, Blutwurst gives a line alluding to Shvein Hax's true plans for invading Gasco:
    Blutwurst: We'll need much more of this [energy] if we're to revive the heart of the Lost God…
  • The pre-boss cutscene for Chapter 10 has a line from Shvein Hax regarding the Radio Woman who's been advising the children:
    Hax: That voice guided them as well…? Heh, now I see…
  • For anyone who didn't play Solatorobo: Red the Hunter, the Radio Woman mentions in Chapter 11 that the passage of Malamute has ruins that include the "giants that once laid waste to mankind". If that wasn't clear enough to the player, this line from the first Jeanne Archive obtained after beating said chapter casually reveals that this universe isn't simply a mere fantasy one:
    "With the discovery of the first Juno in Australia and utilizing the information gathered…"
  • If you didn't meet certain requirements by the time you fight Britz:
    Britz: It is my duty to stop you here… Forgive me, Mother…
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Von Stollen and Von Baum are spared by the children after their defeat and run away after being let go, never to show up again or seek any sort of revenge. subverted in the sequel, as they 'join' the crew and play a major role
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Discussed at multiple points and in passing conversations the children can have during Intermissions. Overall the children do not like having to kill Berman soldiers even if it's to get their families back, and some of them lament that many such soldiers likely have their own loved ones or express desires to end the war without even the Berman side suffering too many lives lost. But War Is Hell, so you still have to mow down any that stand in your path — though the game flip-flops on whether destroying an enemy vehicle kills its inhabitants or not, so you're not necessarily killing every single one of them, but there are likely casualties nonetheless.
• White Magician Girl: Nearly all of the girls in the crew learn at least the basic healing skill, Lullaby, with Hanna the most specialized in healing. Wappa is the sole exception among the girls (since she's a tomboy), while Boron is the only boy to learn Lullaby (since he's a Gentle Giant).
• Womb Level: The final stretch of the final chapter, just before the final boss fight, is set within the Vanargand's pseudo-organic bowels. During if you step out to the scrap fishing perch during the intermission, you can make out the squelching of the Vanargand's bowels and its heartbeat.
• Would Hurt a Child: Appropriately, none of the Berman antagonists have any reservations towards fighting or trying to kill the children. Colonel Pretzel himself even states outright that he'll treat them no more mercifully than any other foe on the battlefield.
• Writing Around Trademarks: Unfortunately, due to Bandai Namco still holding partial owenrship of the series, none of the pre-established Little Tail Bronx characters can be directly referenced by name. This is in full effect in regards to Baion, who is restricted to the name of "The Hooded Man", with his eyes being obstructed at all times.
• You Monster!: A rare example of a villain saying this: Pretzel, in his dying breath, calls the Taranis a 'demon' after he's obliterated by the Soul Cannon.

Results:
Turns: 60 (A)
Damage Received: 21 (S)
Technique: 7100 (S)

Rank:
S^note As in, "Sorry for all the time you've lost."

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Kimi ga mitekita keshiki ni^note In the scenery you've seen
Zutto zutto ikiteiru^note I'll always live on
Moshimo sekai ga owarunara^note If the world should end
Hana ni natte yorisō yo^note I'll become a flower and snuggle up to you