#I hope their promotion class and potential dragon form look even goofier

[crapmagak]

Engage Drip Marketing: Alear

Edit: Don't know why but my brain farted and thought the characters name was spelled Elear. Oof.

Oh me, oh my. Oh yee, oh ha! A new Fire Emblem’s been revealed at long last, and it seems like we’re already getting drip marketing. So, I feel like posting my thoughts about it.

Alear

Their design… is a little silly, but otherwise fine. The fandom came around on Corrin, it came around on Byleth, it’ll probably come around on our new minty fresh protags as well. And aside from their hair color, I actually dig both of their outfits quite a bit.

As for FireEmblemJP’s tweet about them, here’s a rough translation…

The main character of this work is the divine dragon "Alear". (CV: Hiroshi Shimono, Aya Endo) A thousand years ago, after the Fell Dragon was sealed. I was asleep in the sacred land "Ritos", but one day I suddenly woke up. I can't seem to remember who I am because I've been asleep for so long.

So, we have another amnesiac Avatar. I actually think it’s a good thing. The player is a stranger to Elyos, so it makes sense for the avatar to reflect that, as cliche as it may seem. Another thing that caught my eye was a name for the Holy Land, Ritos. I don't know if this’ll be the English name or not, and I can’t seem to find anything the name would be a reference too. Either way, I feel this confirms the game starts out in the Holy Land.

Another tweet says…

You can choose from two appearances for the main character. The default name is called "Alear". Red and blue hair and eyes are impressive.

Well, it seems like customizable appearances are out the window. Figured as much considering the cutscene quality. Chances are the theories about joycons determining hair are also not gonna pan out. I’ll admit, I was curious to see how Alear would look with my green and pink joycons, but oh well.

Finally, we have the tweet detailing Alears class and crit animation…

Alears initial class is "Dragon Child". A descendant of a dragon clan that has lived since ancient times, and can use divine dragon swordsmanship.

So, it seems the avatar is sword locked, at least at the start. Apparently they use a special school of swordsmanship though. Ordinarily, I’d assume their “descending from a divine dragon” bit was similar to how various cultures have claimed their royal families descended from gods throughout history, and just that. However, in the ui his class is listed as “Dragon Child/ Dragon”, implying wyrm slayers will deal bonus damage. This makes me wonder if Alear will be able to transform into at all later on, perhaps via promotion or a story event. If so, I'm eager to see their dragon form. 

Now before I finish this post, I wanna examine the crit animation clip, and what will likely be the game's first map. It seems to be a small map, taking place in a valley outside. We’re up against some corrupted, all ax users. The twin characters are green units, and Alear and Vander seem to be rushing to their rescue. However, the top half of the map is completely empty. As such, I think after you talk to the twins and recruit them, more enemies will teleport in, and give you tutorials on mage and healer units.

Considering there's a cutscene where Framme and the others seem to see corrupted for the first time, I think the story will be that once Alear wakes up, they and the others will journey outside the castle. After some brief introductions and worldbuilding, the corrupted will arrive to become fodder for tutorials.

So, all in all, Alear seems to be a pretty basic but functional Avatar. And while I don’t hate them as much as others, I’m still pretty lukewarm.  Hopefully their swordsmanship will stay flashy, and they’ll transform later on. That’s all I’m really hoping for. As an aromantic individual, I find shipping the units with each other more enjoyable than shipping my own character with one, so the Avatars of the series will never really be a big deal to me. 

Now, what I’m really excited to learn about are the other characters.