Video Game / Solatorobo: Red the Hunter

Fetch This!

"If"?! Did you say "if"? Who do ya' think you're talkin' to? When I get down to work, there's just no stopping me.

—Red Savarin

Solatorobo: Red the Hunter (「ソラトロボ -それからCODAへ-」, "Soratorobo -Sore Kara Kōda e-", lit. "Solatorobo: And Then, to CODA")^note "Solatorobo" is Japanese for "Sky and Robot" is a 3D Action RPG and platform game, published by Namco Bandai Games and developed by CyberConnect2 of .hack fame, as a late release for the Nintendo DS. It is a Spiritual Sequel to the 3D anime-style Action-Adventure and platform game Tail Concerto, the second game in the Little Tail Bronx universe (through considered the third installment overall when including the Mamoru-kun series of Public Service Announcements for the city government of Fukuoka), and marks the fifteenth anniversary of CyberConnect2. The game was originally released in Japan in October 2010, and in Europe in July 2011. The North American version of the game was released in September later that year, with all the DLC for the Japanese and PAL versions implemented into it from the get-go.

Like Tail Concerto before it, the world of Solatorobo is made up of floating islands inhabited by anthropomorphic cats and dogs ("Felineko" and "Caninu"), this time being set in the France-inspired Shepherd Republic. The main character, a canine adventurer-for-hire named Red Savarin, begins the game taking up a seemingly run-of-the-mill job to infiltrate a cargo ship and steal an important file from the villainous Kurvaz. Red soon comes across a strange medallion kept on the airship, and upon his choice to take it off their hands, a mysterious giant monster named Lares appears, knocking the ship out of the sky.

Red makes his escape, but encounters a mysterious child named Elh, who he rescues in the nick of time. Upon regaining consciousness, Elh explains to Red that the medallion he stole has seemingly chosen him for the task of sealing away Lares, since the rampaging beast will soon destroy the world if nothing is done. Red, given that he has little choice anyways, takes up the Call to Adventure and agrees to help Elh in evading the ambitious Kurvaz and sealing away the monster. But of course, that's just how the story starts...

Gameplay focuses on controlling Red and his Mini-Mecha, the Dahak, and combat usually involves picking enemies up and throwing them, picking objects up and throwing them at enemies, or picking enemies up and throwing them at other enemies. The DAHAK is also customizable, with different armor types made for different combat situations (speed, defense, attack power, hydraulics). The game also boasts a large selection of side-quests to help flesh out the game's world, and various mini-games including airship racing and giant hermit crab fishing.

The game was directed by Takayuki Isobe and written by Yasuhiro Noguchi (both of whom were designers on the original Tail Concerto), with character designs once again done by Nobuteru Yûki, and with Chikayo Fukuda returning as composer. Yoshitake Taniguchi of Super Robot Wars fame was in charge of the Mini-Mecha designs, and the animated cutscenes for the game were produced by Madhouse. The vocal themes for the game were sung by Tomoyo Mitani (of CyberConnect2's LieN label along with Fukuda). The game is also notable for sporting very impressive visuals for a Nintendo DS title, and for having 100 different advertisements for it aired in Japan on the 21st of October, successfully breaking the Guinness World Record for the most regional/free-to-air TV commercials for a single product (within a period of eight hours).

In January 2018, Fuga: Melodies of Steel, a distant prequel set in the same world as Solatorobo and Tail Concerto, was announced by CyberConnect2, and was released internationally for all major platforms on July 29, 2021. A sequel, Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2, was also released on May 11, 2023.

For another game that also involves mechas and Catch and Return gameplay, check out Mischief Makers.

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Bonjour! Here are the tropes you can view at the moment!

• Absurdly Low Level Cap: Level 20 is the maximum level Red can obtain, and chances are you won't even need New Game Plus to even reach that.
• Actionized Sequel: Compared to Tail Concerto, this game has a lot more going for it in gameplay and story, and it's all because Red is a hot-blooded trouble magnet that would rather punch first and ask questions never.
• Adventure-Friendly World: About half the world's economy seems to revolve around moving crates around and mercenary-work.
• Adventure Guild: The people running the quest brokers, apparently descended from mercenary groups. The Kuvasz Guild is currently the largest one.
• Aerith and Bob: We've got Red and Bruno (common dog names) and Alicia (common human name) running around with Béluga (a type of whale), Opéra (like the music), and Chocolat and Waffle. Then there's the question of what Elh's name even came from.
• After the End: The remains of cities under cloud level indicate that a massive extinction-level war tore apart a previous civilization. Gets doubled up as Fuga reveals that the Shepherd Republic used to be one giant landmass known as Gasco, which itself used to be France.
• All There in the Manual: In addition to the in-game Library some of the artbooks also discuss the world in-depth. (Naturally these are Japan only and unlikely to be translated any time soon
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The final battle takes place in Tartaros' insides which are apparently composed of bright lights and floating cubes.
• Amazon Brigade: The Pink Peaches sky pirates are composed only of women.
• American Kirby Is Hardcore: The Japanese boxart◊ features the protagonist trio goofing around on Dahak and generally looking happy (Elh is even Giving Someone the Pointer Finger). The European boxart◊ features Red standing solemnly with his stun gun (and also manages to spoil both Red's Trance form and the fact that the world has a mysterious origin and is not just a simple setting). The American boxart tries to Take a Third Option, with Red looking determined but upbeat and Elh being rather pensive.
• And the Adventure Continues: The ending to the game has Elh, now freed from the responsibilities of the Paladin Clan, permanently joining Red and Chocolat on the Asmodeus, as the three continue their adventuring as Hunters.
• Animal Jingoism: The island of Mau is almost exclusively inhabited by Felineko, due to their proficiency at using Nono. Around the island are several statues of an evil dog god, deliberately kept upside-down to take away his power. However, they welcome Red as warmly as Elh, just commenting that they don't get many Caninu coming around.
• Animal Stereotypes: A few are taken into account in the two races. Caninu are described as loyal, friendly, good at physical labor, and like eating hard foods. Felineko are described as fiercely independent, quite aggressive, moody, calculating, and agile. One stereotype that only applies in-universe is the Caninu's proficiency for technology contrasted by the Felineko's proficiency for magic.
• Animal Theme Naming: Most islands are named after various canine breeds (e.g. Airedale - airedale terriers, Spinon - spinone italiano dogs)
• Anti-Villain:
  • The Kurvaz special operative unit are a Type IV. They don't hate Red outright, but they are loyal to Bruno, who is far less noble than he lets on. By Part II, they drop the villain aspect entirely due to Bruno's death and become a support unit to Red whenever things get dicey.
  • Beluga is also a Type IV with shades of Type III, since the main reason he's trying to stop Red at all is to make sure Elh doesn't have to live with the guilt of having to take a life just like he did when he first perform the ritual. He was completely blindsided by Bruno's aggression to awaken Lares, and by Part II, he completely drops any villainous qualities to become an Aloof Ally.
• Artifact of Death: The amulet takes the life of whoever it chooses for the Rite of Forfeit.
  • Only the Chosen May Wield: Though it turns out Hybrids like Red, Nero, and Blanck are immune to it and can go through a Rite with no ill effects.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The Gratuitous French soundbytes are... very... gratuitous, and may not make very much sense if you actually understand the language, even at a fairly basic level.
  • It's not so much nonsensical as it is antiquated. "Nom d'un chien!" and "Sapristi!" are something you'd expect in Tintin.
• As Long as There Is Evil: At the very end of the game, Baion warns Red that if the planet ever sees the inhabitants as a threat to it again, like with humanity, he will return to execute the "Reset" order.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Kaiju aside, there are giant birds in this game which are twice the size of the average person.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Like in Tail Concerto, you can mash the jump button in mid air to temporarily hover. However, unless you have the Type-R unlocked and equipped to use its Spiral Floater ability, then you'll see that it's useless when it comes to correcting jumps, and even the tutorial says it's more suited for avoiding sweeping ground attacks rather than for platforming purposes.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: Red finally wises up and answers the third guardian's riddle, gaining the last piece of the Magic Flute without having to fight him. However, at that exact moment Blanck shows up and a boss battle against him ensues.
• The Battle Didn't Count: The first battle versus Nero and Blanck outside their robots. After getting them to half health, they just say they're tired of playing around and just shoot a huge, undodgeable fireball at you.
• Beam Spam: How the the Titano-Machinae Lares and Lemures attack air ships and open a rift in Tartaros.
• Big Brother Mentor: Carmine taught Red how to be a hunter and Chocolat how to pilot, and certainly was something of a big brother to them. Probably because he actually is one of their (adoptive) elder siblings.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Some of the enemies Red encounters.
• Bland-Name Product: The Stardogs Coffee shop.
• Boring, but Practical: The acid stage in Lemures can be crossed in one go with the R-type mecha's Spin Floater, but it's so very slow it's not worth it. Similarly, using the G-type once a boss is defeated during the Boss Rush, you can go to the next one with full health but the regeneration is slower than continental drift.
• Boss Rush: Two are available as endgame, repeatable quests.
• Bragging Rights Reward:
  • The bonus photo you get from collecting all of the other photo fragments is mostly this, since it doesn't add anything to the total completion rate.
  • The DAHAK Mk-II Type-Omega, which can only be earned on your third playthrough. Sure, it's an Infinity +1 Sword, but it's also mostly there as proof of your dedication to the game.
• But Thou Must!: Played for Laughs in the DLC quest "Kurvaz Quiz Contest", where Red is forced to answer a question relating to something embarrassing that happened to him as a child. It's obvious Red doesn't want to answer the question, but is forced to, and when choosing your answer, there is only one option you can pick.
• Cannot Spit It Out:
  • A minor, nameless female NPC constantly tries to tell herself to spit something out to another male NPC. Subverted when the guy just owes her some money.
• Cartoon Bomb: The weapon of choice of the Black Cats Gang's battle balloon.
• Cast of Snowflakes: Just about every NPC has a unique sprite, and even generic enemies have some personality attached to them. Lampshaded during one sidequest:
  Red: Another "unique" character I have to deal with. Gimme a break...
• Cats Are Magic: Felineko are stated to have a great interest in and aptitude for spells. Averted with the Felineko Precursors, the Lions, who are said to have had absolutely no interest in magic of any sort, relying solely on their physical strength.
• The Cavalry: When Red is facing Nero while the Dahak is being repaired, Chocolat and Elh come in to drop the Dahak Mk. 2 just in the nick of time.
• Central Theme: Confronting the mistakes and tragedy of the past so you can march onwards to a better future. Both Red and Elh have to learn to grow past beliefs and circumstances ingrained in them — Elh has to learn to open up to and confide in others after having lived through centuries of Purpose-Driven Immortality, and Red has to accept his past as a would-be Living Weapon rather than run away from it.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Starts off as a (mostly) light-hearted adventure about stopping an evil organization before devolving into genocide, destiny, the lingering effects of the war caused by the extinct human race, and how much value one's life has compared to everyone else. But enough about that, let's play a quiz show and laugh at how Red used to wet the bed as a child!
• Challenge Run: Invoked in-universe, as one of the rules of the Duel Ship Tournaments states that if one of the fighters declares a challenge, then it is imposed onto the current round, with the caviat of instant disqualification should they fail to complete it. Red learns this the hard way when he was trying to act tough in front of a Fangirl. Though it's also revealed that the challenger doesn't even need to declare the challenge themselves, as third-parties like Cyan or the announcer could easily throw in different winning conditions on a whim, such as needing to perform a triple-throw combo a certain amount of times or enforcing a No-Damage Run during the match.
• City of Canals: Spinon has a network of canals that flow off the edge of the island.
• Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: Middle of a fight? About to die? No problem, just pause everything, open the hatch on Dahak, and switch the parts out to your heart's content! This can actually be quite game-breaking: the Revive parts give you an Extra Life in exchange for taking the most room out of any part, but the game lets you bypass that by letting you just slot the part in when you're about to die and out once you've used it up.
• Character Portrait: Most everyone has a portrait, except perhaps for a very few minor NPCs. Most of those with portraits also have multiple portraits for various moods/facial expressions as well.
• Checkpoint Starvation: You can only save at designated save markers, which are plentiful on hub worlds but scarce in actual labrynths, or if you completed a subquest. Do note that dying will boot you back to the title screen, unless you're fighting a boss in which the game will let you continue from the start of the battle instead.
• Chekhov's Gun: One early side-mission in Pharaoh has you searching trains for suspicious packages. You find a high-grade explosive in one of them, which makes a reappearance much later on, prior to - and as part of - the attack on Tartaros.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Functions as a bit of Deus ex Machina after the final boss. Baion is subdued and even admits he's proud of Red, but Tartaros is about to return to its alternate dimension, threatening to take Red with it. He moans that he'll never make it out in time, since Septentrion has reverted to Dahak and can't fly near fast enough. Baion tells him that, since his Mini-Mecha is made out of nanometal, all he has to do is wish hard enough and Dahak will do whatever he wants it to. Nero and Blanck's spirits have to give it an extra power boost to get Red back to his friends.
• Clingy MacGuffin: The medallion has chosen Red and thus cannot be used without him. Sucks to be him.
• Collection Sidequest: Catching the Black Cats Gang members for their photo pieces. Also serves as a Shout-Out to Tail Concerto, which also had a photo piece Collection Sidequest and had you capturing Black Cats Gang members on a frequent basis.
  • The musical notes you record to listen to music.
• Colony Drop: The ultimate goal of Baion is to issue CODA, the order to defloat all of the floating continents and reset civilization again after its destruction. Interestingly it isn't the fall that will kill everyone, but rather passing through the electrified Cloud Sea that will.
• Colossus Climb: Minor example, to defeat the superheavy prototypes on the Golden Roar you need to get a crate, jump on top of it, then jump onto the top of the prototype and yank out the power crystal, rather than throwing its cannonballs back at it like most similar enemies.
• Colourful Theme Naming: Red, Nero (black), and Blanck (white). The Red Data Children, a series of sidestories, details four more "failed" hybrids - Rose, Rouge, Vermillion, and Carmine - who are all named after shades of red as well.
• Company Cross References:
  • Kite's outfit can be seen in one of the shops in Pharaoh.
  • On one of the information terminals within the Futzu Tower, can see the logo of .hack's fictionalized version of the CyberConnect Corporation… as in, the astronomically corrupt and incompetent Greater-Scope Villain force of the .hack franchise, the in-joke being that they were possibly involved in the near-destruction of all life on Earth prior to the Reset's activation.
• Compliment Backfire: When Waffle tries to complement Alicia for looking pretty in a princess dress, she just gets mad at him for comparing her to Theria.
• Continuity Cameo: Waffle Ryebread, Princess Terria, Cyan, the Black Cats Gang, and Mamoru from Mamoru-kun all cameo. You also get to fight Cyan once in the arena and again as a DLC quest.
• Cool Airship: Although the Asmodeus and the Royal Envy are somewhat standard, the Golden Roar of the Kuvasz definitely applies, housing a Wutai palace on top of and hanging, inverted, off the bottom of it.
• Cool Big Sis: Rose would certainly seem to have been this to Red and Chocolat, prior to completely disappearing from their lives and taking most of their memories of her with her
• Cooldown: Present only in the fishing minigame. Any weapons are able to be fired until they run out of ammo.
• Creating Life: The Juno, thousands of years ago wiped out humanity and the rest of life on the planet and created life from "data" of the old world. Apparently, some of the DNA got mixed up.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Two of the antagonists, Nero and Blanck were created to be "perfect". Unfortunately for them, said perfection means they are perfectly suited to completing one task, after which they're useless - both to the Big Bad, and in general; they complain that they seem to be getting weaker and weaker...
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: The Anju religion is essentially Catholicism WITH BIRDS! To be able to enter their holy forest where all the birds live when they're not guiding souls to the afterlife, you need to obtain a string of rosary beads, and lore says they always have a Bible on hand and worship in churches on Sundays.
• Cute Little Fangs: In some shots, Chocolat and Elh. Red's teeth are highly visible when he smiles, but tend to be a triangular mess of shark-teeth and not particularly "cute".
• Cycle of Hurting: Getting your Hydraulics (how fast you can pick up an enemy) high enough allows you to do this to enemies. Duel ship bosses can be picked up, thrown into the wall and picked up again for an easy No-Damage Run.
• Damsel in Distress: In a downloadable quest, you need to rescue Opéra from a cave-in in Shetland.
• Darkest Hour: When Bruno awakens Lares using Red's life,.
• Deadpan Snarker: When facing a female mook who claims her beauty and her robot's electricity will bring her victory, Red answers with "Well, the electricity sounds dangerous!"
• Defeat Means Friendship: A quest with Alman has him asking Red to teach his new apprentice to work harder. The apprentice wants none of it, telling them to leave him alone, and eventually prompts Red to fight him. Once beaten, his attitude does a 180 and he'll do anything "Boss" Red tells him to, including working as hard as he possibly can. Subverted in a later quest, where he's still as big a slacker, but now he wants to be a Hunter just like Red.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Caninu is a Portmanteau of "canine" and "inu" ("dog"). Likewise, Felineko is a portmanteau of "feline" and "neko" ("cat"). Both are utterly redundant.
• Destructive Savior: One quest has Red interrupt a Sky Pirate gang lifting an entire warehouse with their airship. They defend themselves by throwing bombs one the ground, which Red throws right back. When the airship takes enough damage, it crashes, taking the warehouse with it. At least Red still gets paid.
• Developer's Foresight: In the final chapter of Part I and the first chapter of Part II, Red is in a permanent Trance state throughout the final match with Bruno and the first encounter with Nero and Blanck. For the rest of Part II and on New Game Plus runs, Red's Trance is timed by a meter above his health that slowly drains once activated, but during the story battle against Bruno and Nero & Blanck, this meter disappears and Red's transformation time is limitless. Adding on to this, he'll be in his Mk. II form unlike on the first playthough, meaning Red can freely spam energy blasts and end the fights much more quickly rather than have to wait for the bosses to unleash certain attacks that needs to be deflected back at them.
• Disc-One Final Dungeon: Lares, with Bruno as a Disc-One Final Boss. They do a real good job of hiding that it's only Disc One, too; running the credits after completion and labeling that part of the game the "Final Chapter" (the next part winds up being "Part Two Chapter One").
• Do a Barrel Roll: When in flight mode on the Dahak, press R to spin in mid-air. Unlike most barrel rolls, this is a form of attack rather than dodging.
• Doing In the Wizard: Supplementary materials reveal that all of the setting's magic is actually manipulation of the nanomachines left over from the destruction of the old world. This is also, for reference, why Hybrids like Rose have a huge natural aptitude for 'magic' - they're full of nanotech.
• Doomed Hometown: You get your first few quests in Airedale before Lares sends his shades at you and razes parts of the town. It gets better, thankfully. There's also Ragdoll, the hometown of the Paladins which gets razed by Baion prior to the game.
• Dub Name Change: The two species Solatorobo's cast are composed almost entirely of were originally known as "Inuhito" and "Nekohito" in Japanese (literally, "dog person" and "cat person"). While Tail Concerto's English localization chose to translate these terms literally, Solatorobo decides to go with the more creative "Caninu" and "Felineko", which wound up being used in subsequent English-language Little Tail Bronx material (such as Fuga: Melodies of Steel) ever since.
• Edible Theme Naming: Chocolat Gelato, for starters. The Fraisier orphanage is named for a strawberry pastry.
  • There are more subtle ones like Opéra Kranz,Gren Sacher, Red Savarin, Suzette (whose name is also one letter apart from the French for lollipop), Charlotte, Biscotte, Albert, and Flo is apparently short for Fromage.
• Either/Or Offspring: According to one of the many Japanese advertisements, caninu and felineko can have kids together. Their offspring are either caninu or felineko, not hybrids.
• Eldritch Location: The inside of Lares and Lemures is weird, made out of a mix of organic materials, mechanic components and magitek that may or may not be its own pocket dimension. The inside of Tartarus is even weirder, this time definitely being some sort of Pocket Dimension consisting out of blue void with swarms of white cubes as well as other constructs suspended in it.
• Emotionally Tongue-Tied: Red can turn into this, depending how you play one sidequest. In a new, "special" simulation, Elh admits that she wants to stay with Red forever, and you're given the dialogue choices of "I'd better be honest too" and "Too embarrassed to say".
• Enemy Mine: The Kurvasz, Howler Sky Pirates, and a train conductor join forces to procure a powerful bomb to help in the fight against Tartaros.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: The Futzu Tower is lacking in the evil (although it is definitely related to the antagonists) but it fits the ominous aspect of the trope well.
• Expanded Universe: The Red Data Children series of side novels, as well as a radio play of the same and some 4koma comic strips, seen in Japanese here and a partial English Fan Translation here (comics are safe; rest of site is NSFW).
  • On Tumblr, the same fan who translated the Solatorobo radio play has done further translation work for many of the other tie-in novels, official backstories and in-universe histories that have only been officially released in Japanese.
• Expy: Lares is essentially a draconic Iron Giant.
• Fame Gate: Some quests manditory for plot are blocked off unless you reach a certain Hunter Rank, which can be raised by completing other available quests.
• Filler: Despite the ONE HUNDRED ADVERTISEMENTS containing a lot of information on character bios, gameplay mechanics and lore, there are some... very random, tangentially related, and (somewhat) funny little sketches here and there. Prize for most unrelated commercial has got to go to sneezing man.
• Fishing Minigame: In it, you use a harpoon shooting mecha to fish for gigantic flying hermit crabs that use airships the size of small buildings as shells.
• Fluffy the Terrible: The guard in Spinon has a quest requiring you to tame two giant killer fishes. He calls them Cathy and Anna. When you find a third giant fish, he decides to name that one Mary. At the end of the quest, he says if he ever finds another, he would name it after Red. And if you go in the sewers again after that, you find such a fish, though you can't fight it.
• Flying Seafood Special: Sky fish, obviously. However, it's a rare delicacy, as the crystal in its scales make a lot of it inedible.
  • Hermit crabs that use Airborne Aircraft Carriers as shells.
• Fragile Speedster: The Type R Dahak Mk. 2 model naturally increases your mobility at the cost of defense. Given how little damage the enemies do anyway, however, you probably won't notice the fragile part.
• Freudian Trio: Red is constantly the impulsive Id, but Elh and Chocolat take turns playing Ego and Superego. Normally, Chocolat is Mission Control and Elh is in the field helping Red, but when Elh's betrayal in the Rite of Forfeit is concerned, Chocolat becomes the mediator helping to reconcile the two.
• From the Mouths of Babes: While Elh manages to confuse Red and Chocolate about being female, one of the orphans immediately realizes she's a girl and asks her why she dresses like a boy. Red replies that it makes it easier to play, volunteering a flustered Elh for babysitting duty.
• Funetik Aksent: Captain Grumpf has an "evil German officer" accent, replacing f with v ("VIRE! VIRE! VIRE!").
• Fungus Humongous: Viszla's entire economy is based around harvesting the sap of these mushrooms.
• Funny Animal: The Felineko and the Caninu are anthropomorphic cats and dogs, respectively.
• Fun with Acronyms: CODA, which stands for Continent Orientation Defloat Alignment.
• Fur Is Skin: Everyone has both body fur and head hair.
• Furry Reminder: Red spends a great deal of time chewing on a Stock Femur Bone, and Caninu are shown as catching flying discs in their mouth like regular dogs in lore.
• Giant Enemy Crab: A common enemy, the Crustacrab and its baby variants. An even more giant version with a large airship or an entire small island can be fished in the Fishing Minigame.
• Giant Flyer: The Master of the Clouds, who is used to travel from Shephard to Earth.
• Goggles Do Nothing: A lot of characters in this game have goggles, which can be justified by the setting. Some characters never take them off, while others never wear theirs. However, Red never wears his pair and Chocolat's pair is also fairly questionable, what with her flying within the airship's already protected cockpit. The second intro ends with a pair of cracked goggles on the ground.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: To fight against Nero, Blanck, and eventually Tartaros, Red enlists the help of Opéra and the Kurvasz, who then put out a call for everybody to help. And they do.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: The gang of mischievous kittens, and their stolen photos Red can collect to complete his photo gallery. Red even says that he's "gotta catch them all" when Barry the photographer sends him to find the rest of the photos.
• Gratuitous French: The dominant language of the Shepard Republic is French. Fittingly, most of the characters say a little stock French phrase before engaging in dialogue. Nom d'un chien!, indeed.
• Grapple Move: The core gameplay mechanic. your mech can grab enemies and (solid) projectiles and toss them around, either hurling them at enemies or indulging in Metronomic Man Mashing. If you're quick enough you can grab a thrown enemy after it bounces and throw it again and again.
• Grid Inventory: The Dahak can be upgraded with modules slotted into a grid, but the entire grid isn't available at first. Finding Power Crystals to unlock new slots is one of the main reasons to search areas thoroughly! The modules come in all shapes and sizes, including some of the classic Tetris blocks. Once you get the Mk 2, the total unlockable space increases as well, allowing for further enhancement.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: A common tactic when fighting multiple enemies is to throw one at another, damaging both.
• Guide Dang It!: The Puzzle pieces make a return from Tail Concerto, now caught through finding the different members of the Black Cats Gang. Though there is a tell when you're close to one (an object they're hiding in will wiggle and shake), you're gonna be needing a guide if you want to find them all, especially since unlike in Tail Concerto, you actually do get a special reward for filling out the photo gallery.
• Gunblade: The stun gun that Red uses outside of the Dahak has a really big bayonet on it, though it's never used.
• Halfway Plot Switch: The first half of the game is relatively lighthearted and revolves around dealing with sky pirates and sealing a monster, all in a world of animal people. The second half of the game revolves around the human precursors and apocalyptic origins of the world, while Red himself is revealed to be a Hybrid, and his father wants to kill all sentient life.
• Heavy Sleeper: A female vendor NPC spends the entirety of the game dreaming of money. She even manages to sleep through a kaiju attack and the final large scale battle at the climax of the game.
• Heel–Face Turn: The Kuvasz Guild, after Opera takes over due to the death of Bruno.
• He Is Not My Boyfriend: Elh and Red, though the phrase in question isn't used directly.
• Hey, That's My Line!: Obviously, the train conductor in Pharaoh didn't get his job just so that Red could steal his "All aboard!" line.
• High-Tech Hexagons: The Futzu Tower, which contains a highly advanced AI, features a lot of hexagons.
• Holding Hands: Well, Paws: Red and Elh are forced to, during Merveille's "special" training simulation, which was just her way of getting Red to finally admit his feelings. It eventually leads to a "You two can let go of each other now."
• Hostage for MacGuffin: At the end of Samoyede, Bruno kidnaps Elh to make an exchange for Red's medallion and indirectly his life.
• Human Sacrifice: The medallion requires the sacrifice of the person it chooses in order to active the Rite of Forfeit or the Rite of Awakening. This is implied several times in the story and it gets much more obvious the closer that Elh gets closer to being able to seal Lares, finally coming out on the Golden Roar.
• Humans Are Bastards: The reason why the Juno offered to wipe the planet clean and start over, giving it a chance to recover. The fact that the humans contacted accepted the offer also says something.
• Humanoid Female Animal: Most of the girls have a decidedly more "human" look to them, with peach or tan fur and shorter muzzles than their male counterparts; this has confused many players into believing Chocolat is a Felineko. Merveille is an exception, having a longer muzzle but peach fur.
• Hybrid All Along: Red is unaware that he's not an ordinary caninu until he transforms into a human while fighting the Disc-One Final Boss. It's only in the second half that he learns that he's a genetically-engineered Half-Human Hybrid.
• Hybrid Monster: What most of the non-robot enemies look like.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: Red recovers health by picking up Cartoon Meat.
• Immortal Life Is Cheap: Averted. Red is upset at the thought of having to leave Elh inside Lemures while he takes on Tartaros. She points out to him that she is technically immortal, and he notes that somehow, that doesn't make him feel any better about it. Considering Baion wiped out the rest of the Paladins and her form of immortality is just "never ages but can be killed", he's right to worry.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty:
  • Played straight by Béluga, but averted for Elh, who seems to be stuck as a teenager. After losing her immortality, she comments that she seems to have finally grown a bit after three hundred years.
  • Also played semi-straight by Baion, who looks somewhere in his forties.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Dahak Type Omega, a form that combines the abilities of all four of its regular forms and turns the power up to eleven. As can be imagined, this form is incredibly broken, so you may find yourself asking "What's the catch?" The catch is that it only becomes available to you during a New Game ++, so you have to play through the ENTIRE GAME a grand total of 3 times in order to use it. Good luck.
• Instant Flight: Just Add Spinning!: The Type R set for the Mk 2 allows it to hover by holding the jump key to spin
• Interface Spoiler: As Disc-One Final Dungeon above says, the game does a decent job of making you think that beating Bruno beats the game...except that your Hunter Rank, if you did all available sidequests is roughly six and a half, and anyone who's seen a 'sidequest rank' in a JRPG before knows that the game always give you just enough quests to reach whatever the max level is. Plus, there are some sub-plots in the sidequests that don't get resolved by the Bruno fight. Plus the customize screen won't have everything unlocked yet. Basically, you'll think it's the end of the game, if you haven't been going for 100% Completion.
• Interrupted Declaration of Love: In one sidequest, Elh and Red. She says she hasn't been able to feel happiness or love in years, but has finally begun to feel them again with him. He says he's got something he needs to say to her as well, but then the simulation ends and he loses his train of thought, though he remembers vividly that he was going to say something important. She decides she'll just be patient and wait until he can tell her himself (despite the fact that it was her confession that prompted his in the first place). That was Merveille's plan all along.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • The game's romantic subplots seem to live on this trope. All three couples that are teased with any seriousness - Red with Elh, Alicia with Waffle, and Béluga with Merveille - are one part Caninu and one part Felineko.
  • The minor couple of Cerise and Raisin are also an example.
• Inevitable Tournament: Averted. The tournament in this game is completely optional. Only a few battles even give the skill points required to access higher ranked quests and progress the story.
• In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves: Baion makes this claim during the final battle, comparing the wars fought by the Caninu and the Felineko to the now extinct humanity which destroyed itself.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: Red goes through one after the game's midpoint via Virtual Training Simulation.
  • Face Your Fears: One of the simulations has him facing his worst fear: losing control and killing everyone he cares about.
  • White Void Room: Since Red's memories are more or less completely MIA, the simulator shows the facility where Merveille and Baion created him as a series of semi-disconnected, floating white rooms.]
• Kill It with Fire:
  • Baion's Mini-Mecha, the BERIUS P-2, is specialized in this.
  • Certain other minor enemies as well, plus flamethrower traps placed here and there.
• Lift of Doom: Two elevators have you dodging moving flamethrowers in the Golden Roar.
• Living Battery: While they don't require one to operate, Lares and Lemures will turn you into one in exchange for controlling them.
• Lost in Translation: In the EU version, a few of the puns get lost. One instance is Kuvasz which is renamed "Kurvaz" and the misspellings of Princess Terria and Stare Pris's names (Theria and Stair respectively).
  • Mis-blamed: All of the above are actually the official romanizations given out by CyberConnect2 itself, as can be seen in the Japanese commercials which use the Roman alphabet to spell the aforementioned names. Nintendo of Europe simply went with those over keeping consistency with the Atlus-translated names in Tail Concerto.
• Lost Superweapon: The Titano-Machina.
• MacGuffin Delivery Service: The Kurvasz allow Red to collect the stones needed for the Rite of Forfeit before stealing them to use in their own Rite of Feasting to superpower instead of seal Lares.
• Market-Based Title: The game is called Solatorobo: And Then, To CODA in Japan, but was retitled to Solatorobo: Red the Hunter everywhere else.
• Malevolent Architecture: Bruno designed the Golden Roar to have lifts of doom and buzz saw staircases. Lampshaded by Red.
• Man-Eating Plant: The carnivorous roses in Viszla.
• Maybe Ever After: Both new couples, Red with Elh and Béluga with Merveille. Strongly implied that they will in the future, but nothing definitive yet.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Red's mecha is named after Azi Dakaha, a Sumerian demon, while his ship is named Asmodeus.
  • Lares and Lemures are named respectively after guardian deities and vengeful spirits from ancient Roman religion.
  • Tartaros is named after an ancient Greek deity associated with the underworld.
  • Opéra's mecha Tiamat is named for a chaotic Babylonian sea goddess.
  • Nero (black) and Blanck (white) represent Yin and Yang. Red the character is the odd sibling out and the one lacking the "perfection" given to Nero and Blanck, just like red the color, which in Yin-Yang symbolizes the absence of both.
• Men Don't Cry: Red seems to hold this view, as after saving Elh from some bugs and getting told to stay away, he teasingly asks "Eyes red from crying?" By that point everyone knew Elh's a girl and Red was likely just being a jerk. Red himself also lacks any sort of crying sprite.
  • Tender Tears: Elh apparently does not have a problem with crying, possessing at least two separate sprites with small droplets at the eye corners and displaying them without shame (the above comment to stay away was because a second wave of bugs was coming). The second opening animation even includes a Sparkling Stream of Tears.
• Metaphysical Fuel: Crystals. They are also the driving force that started the war which ended humanity, representing a darker side of the trope.
• Metronomic Man Mashing: The Type G's Kaiser Hammer. Hilarious when used on bosses.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: The DAHAK Mk. 2.
• Militaries Are Useless: Commented on when one character asks what the hell the army was doing when Kaiju were attacking his city.
• Minecart Madness: A returning element from Tail Concerto in the mines of Shetland.
• Mix-and-Match Critter: The Giu (not appearing in the main game) are a mix of boars and cows. They serve the role of livestock.
• Mole Miner: Appears as a recurring enemy in the game, in various sizes.
• Moose and Maple Syrup: Viszla, sort of: while it has a temperate climate, the inhabitants are fond of adding "eh" to their sentences, not to mention that their entire economy is based on making a sweet, sticky substance made from the local plant life (honey rather than maple syrup).
• More Dakka: several quests put you behind a rapid-fire anti-air gun.
  • Sums up Captain Grumpf's tactical sense: when his missiles keep exploding on a magic barrier, he fires more of them.
• Named Weapons: The Mini-Mecha all have names (some are appended with a serial number, but when referring to them that part is usually dropped, giving each a personal name).
• Nanomachines: Used to explain some of the magic which happens in the game, like Red's Dahak fusion.
• New-Age Retro Hippie: The music man in Airedale, who advises Red to "feel the waves, man" and provides the ability to gather music notes from phonographs and hornweed to be used to purchase songs.
• N.G.O. Superpower: The Kuvasz Guild, had (Red destroyed one) four battleships including the Golden Roar (see Cool Airship above) and used them and legions of infantry with mechs to intimidate local governments.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The Mini-Mecha designs can be pretty weird, including a wizard based design and a cowboy based one.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Not only can vastly different races within the species breed freely (foxes with wolves and housecats with lions, for example), but Caninu and Felineko can have children with no problems as well.
• No Social Skills:
  • Béluga can't socialize very well, so after the Kurvasz join forces with the heroes, he leaves the jobs involving others to Red and Elh. This only comes out when dealing with strangers, however; he seems perfectly capable of talking to his teammates without trouble.
  • Elh isn't particularly skilled in social graces, either, but is at least able to talk to villagers without making them angry.
• Not a Date: Elh manages to turn a flower-picking quest into something that's nearly a date, complete with several rounds of small Dialogue Trees (though each question only affects the lines immediately after it and the quest/pseudo-date continues as normal afterward whether your response made Elh happy or not). Red, dense as ever, just thinks Elh's being a little weird and does not notice the date-like atmosphere. She was being a little weird, since she was stalling for time before having to perform the Rite of Forfeit. It doesn't change the fact that she was doing it because she's quite fond of him.
• Notice This: Places that hide rings or P-crystals have blue sparkles over them if you get close enough.
• Oblivious to Love: Waffle to Alicia. One quest has Waffle and Red puzzle over why Alicia would take a compliment so badly (Waffle told her she looked like Theria), while Chocolat sighs that neither of them understand how women's feelings work.
• Oddly Visible Eyebrows: Most everybody has bangs of some sort in their face, but this does nothing to hide their eyebrows.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Protagonist Red finds out that Tagalong Kid Elh is scared of bugs. It becomes a Running Gag in the game. Elh even says "I'm never going to live this down, am I?" the first time the fact is discovered. An NPC uses the exact words after sending Red down a mine and nearly killing him via overenthusiastic application of mining explosives.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: Hydraulics is far and away the best to boost; increasing Attack means your throws do more damage, but with high Hydraulics it won't matter - your enemies will be back in the air, ripe for more throwing, before they can react.
• Oral Fixation: Red is always holding a bone between his teeth. In lore, there are even a variety of "Bite Styles" that dog people can use, each with its own fashion sense, and girls are apparently considered delinquents for chewing on them.◊
• Organic Technology: The Titano-Machina and the Master of the Clouds are both made of this.
• Orphan's Plot Trinket:
  • Invoked by Elh to get into the canals in Spinon, telling the worker that they dropped a pendant from Elh's dead mother in there. As soon as the worker opens the sewers for them, the waterworks immediately stop and it's back to business as usual, causing Red to comment on how creepy it is for someone to be able to turn their emotions on and off like that.
  • The actual pendant that Red found on the Hindenburg also counts, as it's one of the last Paladin relics.
  • Another actual example in the pan flute Red owns, that used to belong to his big sister. Not that he actually remembers this anymore.
• Palette Swap:
  • The Pink Peaches gang has the exact same robots as everyone else...except they're pink.
  • The X Models reuse the standard frame models of the regular S, R, G, and C forms, but has a different livery applied to them.
• Panthera Awesome:
  • The Lions, Precursors to the Felineko, did not rely on magic due to their sheer physical strength.
  • Béluga is a lynx (with a long tail) and Calua is an ocelot (who seems to be lacking in the spots).
• Party in My Pocket:
  • Elh appears in cut scenes or otherwise pops up to talk, but is never visible following Red or riding the Dahak with him.
  • Likewise, when Red tells other characters to follow him somewhere, they're never shown doing it but will appear when they need to say something.
• Pervert Revenge Mode: Elh, after the second Shower of Awkward. Considering it's actually all in Red's mind, he technically went vengeful on himself.
• Pet the Dog: In a downloadable quest, Opéra accepts a job for the people of Shetland to make up for harassing the town during their search for the crystal stone.
• Playable Epilogue: There are additional quests that can only be played upon defeating the Final Boss, as well as a bonus quest that can be accessed once every other quest in the game is completed.
• Poor Communication Kills: There is a quest where Cocona receives a letter from the Howler sky pirates warning her of their imminent arrival, and its Red's job to stop them from apparently attempting to kidnap her. After fighting off a few of them, their leader explains that the sky pirates are just really big fans of hers and wanted to get some autographs. The letter was just a friendly warning about them coming over, which is hard to come across as benign, given their occupation.
• The Power of Friendship: What Red says keeps him going even when things get rough. Also the reason he claims they will not dissolve into war like the humans did, since they only began to war on a global scale when they stopped helping each other get better.
• Precursors to the Caninu were the Wolves, who were highly skilled in the magical arts (unlike their decedents) and good with technology, first providing robots to Shepherd during the Hundred Lilies War five hundred years ago.
• Precursor Killers: The Juno to humanity. In an interesting twist, they actually only made the suggestion and provided the kill program. The humans are the ones who made the final suicide call, seeing it as the only way to end their wars and give the planet a chance to recover without them.
• Pre-Rendered Graphics: Solatorobo features anime-style cutscenes.
• The Promise: Elh promises Red a billion rings if he helps to complete the Rite of Forfeit. Elh doesn't have a billion rings and, if the Rite had gone as it usually did, Red wouldn't have needed them anyway. Red survived and instead of being angry, he just invited Elh to join his team - ostensibly to work off that debt but nobody was fooled.
• Proportionately Ponderous Parasites: There are enemies around Red's size found inside the Titano-Machina which are basically its immune system, though there are some ulcer-like parasites.
• Protection Mission: During Red's Journey to the Center of the Mind, the software begins by creating a warmup for him from his memories. He winds up defending Elh from a bunch of bugs, seeing as that's what he considered the most laughably easy thing to come up with.
• Psychopomp: The Anjalists believe that birds guide souls to the afterlife.
• Pun: The soundbytes, such as Red's aforementioned "nom d'un chien!"^note lit. damn!. One of Opéra's is a fairly subtle combination of "meow" and "oui".
• Punch-Clock Villain: The Kuvasz special ops forces. Calua is mostly just having fun and goofing around. Gren is a noble soldier who considers Red to be a Worthy Opponent, and Opéra shows displeasure at the more ambiguous moral choices she has to make as the leader.
• Punny Name:
  • Chocolat Gelato.
  • Caninu is a Portmanteau of "canine" and "inu" ("dog"). Likewise, Felineko is a portmanteau of "feline" and "neko" ("cat").
  • Not to mention most of the place names.
• Puzzle Boss: Possibly as a Call-Back to Tail Concerto, any fight against The Pris Sisters goes against the standard design principles of every other boss, which usually involves Red exploiting their Tactical Suicide Boss natures. Here, you have to wait for the bombs they dish out to cook a bit before tossing it near their air craft so the explosion can hurt them, as they're too high up for Red to grab and toss normally and Red can't aim the bombs directly towards them.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: Kuvasz's Special Ops elite unit.
  • Terrible Trio: Opéra (boss lady), Gren (calm and composed lacky), and Calua (goofy lacky).
• Rainbow Speak: Red is for items or people vital to the plot, Green is for important-but-not-quite-vital sentences, and (Blue in parenthesis is for thoughts or whispered words.)
• Real Men Wear Pink: Diamundo's racer is built for power, from an old motorcycle, is described as being the manliest vehicle around... and is bright pink.
• Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: In-universe, this attitude (and a literal instance) is the whole reason for the photo collection sidequest: Alicia got a photo taken while wearing a princess dress, and she's so embarrassed by it the has her gang swipe all the photographer's photos. Waffle eventually sees it and compliments her, but she's offended by the comparison to Princess Theria.
• Rearrange the Song: Pulse of Lares, which alters and extends the melody of Inside the Iron Giant from Tail Concerto. Considering that the Iron Giant is a Titano-Machina just like Lares and Lemures, this shouldn't be surprsing.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Calua Napage and Gren Sacher of the Special Office elite unit, respectively. They're even Color-Coded Characters.
  • Also Blanck and Nero. Again respectively, although the their color schemes are switched.
  • The major villains of each storyline: Bruno (red) and Baion (blue).
• Regional Bonus: The US release skips the "downloadable" part of the DLC; those quests are unlocked like any other as you go through the game.
• Religion is Magic: Most followers of Oshilasama are able to cast spells using Nono, thanks to years of rigorous training that looks a bit like stereotypical Shaolin monk exercises (though some degree of natural talent is required for training to do anything, and usually only men are allowed to train, though women can be born with the talent). The name of the religion seems to denote they worship someone named Shila (with o and sama for politeness's sake), but precisely how that worship is carried out is never mentioned - maybe the god/goddess just likes to watch Cat Folk sweat?
• Rent-a-Zilla: The Titano-Machinae Lares, a 5 kilometer (over 3 mile) long monster and Lemures, which also appears later on.
• Replay Mode: The game lets you buy commemorative plates to rewatch cutscenes and find musical notes that unlock the game's soundtrack.
• Rescue Romance:
  • Double Subverted. Red saved an unconscious Elh from The Hindenburg, but their Ship Tease doesn't pick up until quite a bit later and that rescue was never mentioned.
  • Also invoked twice:
    • Once by Alicia pulling a Deliberately Distressed Damsel ploy.
    • And once again by Merveille being a Shipper on Deck and creating a Virtual Training Simulation to convince Red and Elh to admit their feelings.
• Retcon: In Tail Concerto, the floating islands people live on were portrayed as sitting just above the surface of the planet, and the manual stated that said surface world indeed had land— just that the residents of Prairie avoided descending to it outside of collecting water due to there being dangerous wild animals. Solatorobo, on the other hand, states that the islands instead float above a dangerous sea of plasma clouds, which themselves conceal the planet's surface. The art books for Tail Concerto, released after Solatorobo came out, state that Prairie itself floats above a huge floating island "sea" spanning the length of it, although all other details are retained from the game's original lore.
• The Reveal: Two actually:
  • Red is a hybrid created by Merveille Million and Baion.
  • The current setting was Earth All Along.
  • Gender Reveal: Elh is a girl.
• Rite of Passage: In the religion of Oshilasama, young Felineko become men by mastering magic in the island of Mau.
• Running Gag: In the 4koma comics, Red is always using his robot◊ to help◊ with his◊ laundry◊.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: The scatter rats.
• Schizo Tech: The DAHAK has jet/rocket engines in flight mode, but no aircraft in the game use them for some reason. The Caninu and Felineko also appear to have cell phones despite the relatively low tech level of the setting.
• Sequel Hook: A ridiculous amount of foreshadowing is piled on you after you beat Bruno. Ranging from subtle like Merveille and Béluga's expressions to obvious, like the ominous silhouettes of the new villains or Lares's glowing eye and restarting core. Luckily, this is all just mid game.
• Shared Universe: with Tail Concerto, Mamoru-Kun, and Fuga: Melodies of Steel. All of them are set in a Post-Apocalyptic Earth as well.
• Shipper on Deck: Merveille is this to Red and Elh in the DLC quests, so much.
  • Everyone Can See It: Chocolat and Béluga also seem to suspect something is going on with the two of them and smirk about it, but they don't push too much.
• Ship Tease:
  • A lot between Red and Elh during the main story, but much more so in the DLC quests.
    • In #5, they both act embarassed when Red sees Elh in her cheerleader outfit, not to mention the fact she's disappointed if Red doesn't manage to beat the track record (which is the condition she agreed to in order to wear that outfit in the first place).
    • In #7, she gets extremely upset when Red has Princess Terria and Toffee fangirling over him, and in the end Red admits he wanted to give her the tournament prize as they make up.
    • #8 borders on "they get together". See Interrupted Declaration of Love.
  • Béluga and Merveille also get a lot. They are mostly seen together in the main quest and in the DLC quests Béluga gives a field of flowers hologram for Merveille and tries to impress her in an arena fight.
• Short Teens, Tall Adults: Merveille is 29, Bruno is 40, and Opéra is 20, and they're much taller than the teenage characters. Red is 17 and 140cm/4'7", Calua is 18 and 145cm/4'9", Gren is 19 and 160cm/5'3", and Chocolat is 13 and a mere 120cm/3'11". While their exact ages aren't given, due to their more private natures, Elh and Béluga are stated to "look about" 14 and 18 and be 130cm/4'3" and 160cm/5'3", respectively.
• Shout-Out:
  • The DAHAK's RX-type has the same color scheme as the EVA-01.
    • Speaking of which, Lares looks like EVA-01 Took a Level in Badass, being made of stone and five kilometers tall.
  • In the novel, Forest of Healing, Bruno asks Québec if he came to laugh at him.
• Show Within a Show: Apparently, there's a popular anime in the game called "Super Mewly", which looks surprisingly like Astro Boy.
• Shower of Awkward: Done twice, ending any confusion over Elh's gender. Modesty Towels prevented those moments from being even more awkward.
  • Though Red's "What have we here?" line, screen fade to black, and the subsequent red mark on his face suggest perhaps he stole Elh's towel the first time...
  • And the second time, it was actually a mental "reward" cooked up by his subconscious for beating the warmup level of the Virtual Training Simulation, suggesting perhaps it wasn't quite as awkward on his end...then he gets a Megaton Punch or two and wakes up with a headache, implying some sense of guilt or that he Can't Act Perverted Toward a Love Interest.
• Sidequest: Full of them. They're optional, unless you happen to need to be a slightly higher Hunter rank to take a plot-relevant quest. Not all quests will increase your rank.
• Sky Pirate: Along with the Black Cats Gang making a cameo, the series introduces many new pirate factions: the Clappers, the Howlers, the Peaches, and the Gulls.
• Slasher Smile: Red Savarin gets an absolutely crazy one when The Order is given. His usual upbeat, happy-yet-stubborn demeanor means it's even creepier.
• Sole Entertainment Option: Averted in the lore, where "disc playing" (frisbee), Giu fighting, television, radio shows, sky racing, quizzes, and heavy-lifting, smashing and redecorating contests are available to the people of the Shepherd Republic. You only participate in the last five.
• Sound Stone: The Flute, which is used to call the Master of the Clouds.
  • Though it's not shown or referenced, whatever Red is using to collect the notes to buy songs he's heard likely counts as well.
• Spikes of Villainy: If fur counts, then a lot of antagonists definitely fit this trope. These include Bruno, half of the sky pirates, captain Grumpf, etc.
• Spin Attack: Certain enemies attack by spinning around like tops (and then get dizzy, leaving them open to throw combos).
• Sprite/Polygon Mix: Environments, Red and enemies are all in 3-D, while every single NPC is a 2-D Ambidextrous Sprite.
• Spoiler Cover: In full effect on the European cover, which blatantly reveals that Red is a Half-Human Hybrid with a trance form and that the floating islands was originally Earth, information that the player is not supposed to know until the second half of the game. Apparently, no one told Nintendo (the publishers for the European version) that they're called Plot Twists for a reason.
• Spoiler Opening: At the beginning of the animated intro for the first half of the game, you can see Red transforming into a Hybrid. This doesn't happen until near the end of the first half anyway.
• Stance System: Once you reach the second half of the game, Red's mecha will gain the ability to change its type across 4 different styles, which can be enhanced on New Game Plus runs.
  • Type-S: The default Jack of All Stats that gives Red access to the Giant Swing and the Hyper Driver. The Type-SX puts greater emphasis on Attack stats.
  • Type-R: The Fragile Speedster mode that gives Red access to the Hyper Dash and replaces his normal glide with the Spiral Floater. The Type-RX greatly exaggerates Red's mobility.
  • Type-G: Turns Red into a Mighty Glacier by giving him the Guard Arm, a Healing Factor, as well as the Kaiser Hammer. The Type-GX improves his defense even more.
  • Type-C: Greaty increases the versatility of Red's grapple capabilities, allowing him to access the Wide Grab and the Rocket Tackle. The Type-CX stacks the power of his Hydraulics, ensuring that he can lift things faster.
  • On your third playthrough, Red can also unlock the Type-Omega, which is his Ultimate Form that grants him access to all of the above mentioned abilities.
• Statuesque Stunner: At 180cm/5'11", Merveille is the second-tallest character with a given height, towering over most other characters. The tallest is Bruno (190cm/6'3"), but he's not exactly attractive. Opéra is quite tall compared to most of them, being 170cm/5'7".
• Staying Alive: After the credits roll for the first time, Lares' eyes begin to glow under the water. It comes back for the second half of the game.
• Steampunk: Coal and crystals are the only forms of energy available in this world, the latter being able to also create heat, electricity, and light. Steam is seen used a lot in the game, including powering most robots.
• Strength Equals Worthiness: The three Flute Guardians will allow Red to fight them if he can't answer their riddles. He chooses to fight; It doesn't take as much thought!
• Stuff Blowing Up:
  • One quest has you mining some minerals when the supervisor's men refuse to work. The supervisor provides you with some explosives to help you get through the mine, and makes a slight "miscalculation" in the amount of gunpowder needed, resulting in the mine nearly collapsing on Red. His reaction is just, "Oops, enjoy the fireworks!"
  • Most enemies also explode when you defeat them. Makes sense for the robots; not quite so much for the giant bugs or mice.
• Stylistic Suck: When a guy gives Red a quest to take a box from his ex, he opens the box to find out that it contains a notebook of very sappy and poorly written poetry from the quest giver. He and Chocolat get a few laughs out of it, but it somehow wins the ex over.
  Cool beauty hiding one eye, my lovely honey love muffin pie.
• Take Your Time: Lares is about to be reawakened? The enemy captured Elh? Then succeeded in waking Lares? Nah, go ahead, go fishing, go toss some crates around, see how long it takes you to break 'em!
• Tennis Boss: A large majority of the bosses, although it's not so much hitting projectiles back like tennis, but rather catching them and throwing them back, like dodgeball. This is also a valid tactic for most of the normal enemies you encounter.
• Terrible Trio: The Kuvasz special operative forces.
  • To a lesser degree, the pirate cats.
• That's No Moon: ...that's Tartaros.
• 1000 Origami Cranes: The final DLC quest has Red travelling to every continent and having almost every unique-NPC help the orphans of Bassett create one. It's quite heartwarming.
• Through a Face Full of Fur: Elh and Chocolat often, as well as other characters occasionally. Considering the races of the setting, any time someone blushes it's this trope.
• Throw the Mook at Them: The main gameplay mechanic is to damage enemies by hurling them into each other.
  • The giant shade spawns mooks that are easily stunned and thrown back.
  • When fighting the sacred bird boss, it will fly out of reach laying eggs, which can be thrown at it once it comes back down.
• To Be Continued... Right Now: After beating the "Final Chapter" and having the credits roll the game appears to end with a Cliffhanger. Fortunately it turns out that your only half way through the story at that point. Starting the game again brings you to chapter two.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Red Savarin turns out to be a Half-Human Hybrid who was created by Merville as part of a project to control the Titano-Machina. To a lesser extent, Nero and Blanck when they turn into Caninu.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The EU trailers for the game reveal a few plot details, such as the fact that the world underneath the clouds is Earth and that the animal people used to be humans.
• Training from Hell:
  • Implied to be done by Suzette to her workers to get them to fight in robot matches better.
  • The training grounds on Mau.
  • Arguably the Virtual Training Simulation.
• Transforming Mecha: DAHAK can use "Mode Change" from his battle forms to an anchor-shooting mecha and a flight mecha. There are also variations of his standard fighting mecha available after the half way point.
  • And improved versions of those are available in New Game Plus mode, once you reach the Duel Ship. They're not cheap though!
• Tron Lines:
  • Lares and Lemures have a ton of these, but it's much more obvious from the inside.
  • The Futzu Tower makes especially gratuitous use of this trope.
  • Harder to notice, but the guardians of the magic flute also have a few.
  • And while it may be difficult or nearly impossible to see in-game, this spoilerific piece of concept art reveals that Red's Dahak-fused Trance form has them.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: The game suddenly becomes a rail-shooter a la Panzer Dragoon upon entering Tartaros. Thankfully, it's very brief, and you're free to suplex the Final Boss to your heart's content afterwards.
• Unlockable Content:
  • The Library contains a good deal of lore and is essentially the developers showing off their Worldbuilding skills.
    • Mass Monster-Slaughter Sidequest: Unlocking the History section requires you to "defeat lots of enemies". Just how many is "lots" has never been counted, but even playing through the whole game isn't normally enough to completely unlock the entire History section.
    • Rewarding Vandalism: The Lifestyle section suggests that you "break a lot of stuff". Considering that one form of entertainment for the masses is a contest of scrap metal smashing, that's not such an odd suggestion for the world.
    • Talk to Everyone: Unlocking the section about the Races of the world requires you to "talk with many people". Once again, how many is "many" is not quantified, but apparently it's just number of times you've spoken to someone, rather than the number of unique people you've spoken to.
  • Double Unlock: Cutscenes and music are unlocked as they are seen/heard, but to actually be able to play them at any time, you have to purchase them. Cutscenes cost 300-500 rings, which can be gotten just about anywhere, but music must be purchased via the use of notes than can only be obtained from phonographs and the oddly-musical plant hornweed.
  • Post-End Game Content:
    • New Game Plus: Also contains New Game Plus PLUS!
    • Playable Epilogue: Certain sidequests are only available after the end of the game. They cannot be completed in the New Game Plus mode until the story is beaten again.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: When everyone learns that Elh is female, Red absolutely flips out and complains about being tricked for so long. Perhaps he was getting a little Sweet on Polly Oliver and worried that his previous disgust at Alman was secretly a case of You Are What You Hate?
• Unusual Euphemism: Furballs!
• Unwitting Pawn: Elh doesn't let Red know the true cost of sealing Lares to gain his cooperation.
• Vampiric Draining: What Lares and Lemures do to anyone who tries to merge with and control them, eventually draining the Life Energy of their "masters". Being immortal, Elh and Béluga are able to control them without dying, though the "excess" Life Energy is siphoned off and they lose their immortality.
• Verbal Tic: Calua addresses everyone as "dude?".
• Victory by First Blood: On the Duel Ship, Red will occasionally find himself in a Self-Imposed Challenge where he declares that he'll win without taking a single hit, making it a duel to the first blood for his opponent, while Red still has to defeat them the normal way.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: While the first half of the game has some dark moments, it's still a relatively light-hearted romp about a freelance Hunter named Red living in an Adventure-Friendly World inhabited by Caninus and Felinekos as he goes on a quest to stop Bruno from Taking Over The World. In the first half, that is, cause once Baion takes over as the true Big Bad, everything goes downhill fast. He destroyed an entire civilization dedicated to sealing away the Titano-Machina by burning them all alive, treated his own children as assets that he can easily replace on a whim, and wants nothing more than to commit mass genocide, believing it to be the will of the Juno. His own minions, Nero and Blanck, are also treated with the same seriousness as they don't waste their time with meaningless chit-chat, instead going straight to the part where they kill innocents with sadistic pleasure. Needless to say, whichever tone the game has immediately switches on a dime whenever Baion is brought up.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Taken to a ridiculous degree. Almost every single enemy capable of speech that you defeat apparently gets out of a battle alive. Especially if their machine explodes and leaves no trace of them, even when the machine is flying over the abyss. Sadly averted for Nero and Blanck.
• Villains Out Shopping:
  • One of the special collectible photos you can acquire is a photo of the current Kuvasz special operative unit running away from Bruno after Calua broke his vase◊, and another shows Opéra hugging her two officers◊ and introducing them to her two girls.
  • And then there's the quest where a gang of Sky Pirates only want to get Cocona's autograph.
• Virtual Training Simulation: The Golden Roar has a laboratory which, among other things, has a simulation room.
• Voice Grunting: Type B: Voice clips.
• Was Once a Man: Of the Red Data Children, only Red, Nero and Blanck started that way. Rose, Carmine, Vermilion and Rouge, on the other hand...
• Weaponized Offspring: One of the Divine Beasts lays eggs in midair that hatch into small birds that attack you.
• Welcome to Corneria: Thankfully averted, what with the game's Cast of Snowflakes and all. All the characters, major or not, have at least two dialogue changes throughout the game, if not more.
  • Special mention goes to Flo, the Quest Broker, who, instead of just giving you the same shtick about what quests are available every time you talk to her, actually seems aware of the environment and the situation at hand pretty frequently. This is especially noticeable when Pharaoh is attacked by Tartaros; after Flo gives Red a quest, she'll be concerned and urge Red to be careful. Also, she appears in a few sidequests outside of just working as a broker, and at one point Red can take up a quest from her personally.
• Wham Episode: The last few episodes of the first half and THE ENTIRE SECOND HALF OF THE GAME:
  • Part One, Chapter Eight — "Holy Quarter of Betrayal": Just before Elh and Red can perform the Rite of Forfeit to seal away Lares, it's revealed that the ceremony involves sacrificing the life of the one chosen by the medallion, thus meaning that Elh would have to sacrifice Red's life to seal away Lares. Before everything else can be cleared up, Bruno attacks the heroes in order to steal the medallion away from them, with Elh staying behind and allowing herself to be captured so that Red and Béluga can escape.
  • Part One, Chapter Nine — "Hero, and Fool": It's revealed that the medallion bestowed eternal youth upon Elh and Béluga so that they would be available to perform the Rite of Forfeit when needed, and that neither of them have aged in the three hundred years since then. Red, Chocolat and Béluga team up and successfully rescue Elh, but Bruno obtains the medallion despite the heroes' efforts and Opéra's misdirection. Worse still, he performs the Rite of Forfeit to fully awaken Lares rather than put it to rest, seemingly draining Red dry of his life force and killing him in the process.
  • Part One, Final Chapter — "Final Solution": Red somehow completely survives the Rite of Forfeit and the heroes set off to infiltrates Lares and defeat Bruno. It's revealed that Red also has the power to transform into a human after he sees Bruno attack Elh.
  • Part Two, Chapter One — "Rondo of Black and White": Lares has been completely reawakened alongside another Mechanical Abomination known as Lemures thanks to the work of Nero and Blanck, two other human-like beings who introduce themselves by destroying a section of Pharaoh. Their confrontation with Red reveals has them reveal to him that the three of them are "hybrids", and ends with them fiercely overpowering Red, crippling the Dahak in the process.
  • Part Two, Chapter Two — "Fragments of Time": It's revealed that Merveille and another man created Red as one of the hybrids alongside Nero and Blanck for the purposes of controlling Titano-Machina like Lares and Lemures, with Red being a failure of the project and having his memory wiped of his past. Likewise, it's revealed that Red's greatest fear is turning on his loved ones and hurting them, as symbolized by Nero and Blanck's destructive rampages.
  • Part Two, Chapter Three — "Like Mother and Child": Merveille reveals the name of the man she worked with— Baion, the "original" hybrid— and how he, Nero and Blanck plan to destroy the world. She also reveals his place of origin is the planet hidden below the volatile Plasma Cloud Sea— Earth.
  • Part Two, Chapter Seven — "Guardians of the Stars": Hoo boy.
    • One for the entire Little Tail Bronx mythos— it's revealed that through using the data found within the mysterious Juno relics, humanity of the Old World was able to harness Crystals as a new form of energy and greatly advance their civilization, but this also resulted in fossil fuels plummeting in value, causing economies that couldn't keep up with these advancements to collapse. As a result of tensions between nations worsening, human civilization ended up collapsing into a brutal world war, with them creating Titano-Machina like Lares and Lemures from their Juno to use as superweapons. With massive death, destruction and the biosphere of the planet at risk of complete destruction thanks to the Titano-Machina rampages, the Juno personality AI known as Yurlungur proposed the "Reset" command to a set group of human researchers, which they activated. As a result, humanity vanished in an instant, Juno converted the planet's other organisms into data to use to create new life-forms (including the Caninu and Felineko), and the Earth's landmasses rose to the sky as floating islands to purify the planet below. All but one of the Juno warped themselves to alternate dimensions to await the day in which they would return and bring the world's floating islands back down to the surface through the "CODA" protocol. You got all that?
    • One for the game specifically— Baion's plan is to use Lares and Lemures to summon the Juno known as Tartaros from its dimension, and use it to activate CODA to summon both all the other Juno and force the world's floating islands to descend to the surface— which would kill everyone living on the islands as a result of the volatile Plasma Cloud Sea still being in place. At the end of the chapter, Baion, Nero and Blanck succeed in summoning Tartaros, but Yurlungur makes sure to give Red a patch known as "Re-CODA" to stop it when the time comes.
  • Part Two, Chapter Eight — "A Call of Fangs": With Nero and Blanck's purposes already being fulfilled, Tartaros forces a new "Order" upon Red to "destroy" and "return order to time", resulting in a mind-controlled Red disposing of the two other hybrids by sending their mech to collapse into the Cloud Sea, with the side-effect of leaving Lares and Lemures inactive and vulnerable. The brainwashed Red also almost chokes Elh to death before returning to his senses and fighting off Tartaros' commands.
  • Part Two, Final Chapter — "He Who Laughs Last": With the efforts of all his allies and all the other Hunters across the Shepherd Republic, Béluga and Elh controlling Lares and Lemures, and the data of Nero and Blanck revealed to be surviving within the Dahak, Red succeeds in infiltrating Tartaros. After a climactic final showdown with Baion, Baion gains a new respect for Red and relents, allowing the Hunter to patch in "Re-CODA" and send Tartaros back to its respective dimension, saving the world. The Stinger also reveals that Elh and Béluga used up all the energy keeping them immortal as a result of commanding the Titano-Machina, allowing them to age and live at the same rate as everyone else from now on.
• Wham Line:
  • Around the Samoyede chapter, we have this exchange where Bruno reveals the true extent of his knowledge regarding the Kurvaz's plans:
    Bruno: Ah, you're here, Merveille. …Béluga is not with you today?
    Merveille: That is correct.
    Bruno: He's gone to get the medallion, isn't he? Heh heh heh…!
  • At the end of the same chapter, Béluga reveals the true nature of what the Rite of Forfeit entails:
    Béluga: The "Forfeit" requires a sacrifice. A life to use as forfeit! In other words, the Rite of Forfeit… Is a ritual to seal Lares at the expense of your life, Red!
  • In the final chapter of the game's first half, mere minutes after it seems like Red was killed through the Rite of Forfeit, is shocking not because of what's said but rather who says it:
    Red: …Who… got what…?
  • From early on in the second half, we have the single biggest example in the game, where the nature and setting of both the game and the Little Tail Bronx world overall is put into a completely different light:
    Merveille: The impassable Plasma Cloud Sea that spreads below these islands. Far beneath it exists the Old World… Earth.
• Wham Shot: The climax to the first half of the game involves Red transforming into a human out of seemingly nowhere, after both this game and Tail Concerto have firmly established the setting to be a world populated by anthropomorphic cats and dogs.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Seriously, what was in that file that got burned up on the Hindenburg?
  • The game does state that it was a file containing a list of cash transactions. It isn't specified what for.
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: The only sentient anthropomorphized animals are cat people and dog people. There are lizard/insect hybrids, fishes, and large rodents which act as the monsters in the game. There are fish and cow-like animals called Giu which serve as a food source, with the cow animals also providing milk.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
  • How Blanck and Nero justify their furry killing sprees. Due to them and Red being similar, this causes Red to consider the validity of this trope when applied to feral bugs in a subplot.
  • Likewise, Baion asks Red and Elh if they think humans would find the Caninu and Felineko races to be suitable successors to planet Earth when he meets them in the Futzu Tower.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…:
  • Dahak is capable of lifting and tossing things. Naturally, this applies to each and every enemy you encounter, though at least it varies between picking up the enemy itself and picking up the enemy's projectiles to return them. At least until Red learns to control his Trance, in which case Ki Manipulation becomes a viable option.
  • Likewise, Red isn't very good at solving riddles. So, when the guardians of the flute ask him riddles, he just jumps right in and attacks them instead.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Elh and Béluga admit that their lives feel more meaningful after losing their immortality.
• With a Friend and a Stranger: Red with his sister Chocolat and newcomer Elh.
• With This Herring: Red goes up against what amounts to professional military troops with combat mecha and ancient weapons of mass destruction with a robot that is designed to be a cargo hauler. This is kind of like going up against tanks with a forklift... and winning anyway.
• Wolf Pack Boss: At one point, you fight all three members of the Kuvasz special ops forces at once.
• Womb Level: Lares and Lemures. Don't think about it too much.
• Word Salad Lyrics: "And Then To CODA" certainly qualifies. Aside from some mentions of the sky and winds, the lyrics have nothing to do with the plot or setting of the game.
• World in the Sky: This game is set on an archipelago of floating islands.
• Zeppelins from Another World: Although the Shepard Republic dose have airplanes, airships are by far the most common form of transportation between islands. However the trope is subverted when the setting turns out to be far future Earth.

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"Do as your mind desires, but always see it through to the end."
"We will. That's one order I can happily accept."

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Utsumuku kimi ga hakanakute^note As you look downcast and fleeting
Tsuyogaru koe ga furueteru^note You lie with a shaking voice
Sashinobeta te ni furererukoto osore^note Your reach out to your fears with a trembling hand
Somuketa keo yureru namida^note Your face turns away as it trembles in tears
Kaze ga wataru, kono sora ha^note The winds crossing this sky
Kimi wo tsutsumo yo, itsu no hi mo^note Will envelop you some day