#i wonder if VA sometimes talk like did Zieja talk to Toyonaga? Could Inoue and Leigh talk about Rhea?

[randomnameless]

Needing that evening salt

While I thank @nilsh13 for giving me the link to that interview.

I was like “prepare for a ton of salt, take your lemons”  however, I’ve kind of mellowed out a bit because the VA seems to be a really nice person -

and I’ve read the Toyonaga interview recently.

Sometimes, the VA are allowed to interpret the character in a certain way that fits with what the game developpers more or less intended (granted they are the same guys who didn’t hire a continuity guy so...), and sometimes, it fails because direction sucks, because lenses are given and doesn’t match with the content you’re adaptating.

As a result, we have Jp!Rhea and lolcalised!Rhea.

i wonder if inoue will ever make an interview one day about 3H but I doubt it

We start with the infamous 

“You don’t have to try it so much (to be the calm and composed person), Rhea doesn’t try, she just is - The essence of Rhea is enough”

Pat no :’(

But... Rhea isn’t calm and composed, Rhea is emotional, pretty much, she’s a bubble waiting to burst and she tries to be calm and composed and keep a facade (more on that later) but, I feel like the “Rhea doesn’t try she just is” might be the reason why lolcalised!Rhea feels detached during certain events, when Aelfric’s attempted Nabatean homonculi Transmutation backfires, when Kikuko Inoue nails the sense of sadness and dread because, uh, a man she just said she saw as her own child basically died here to become a grotesque monster and attempted to replicate her own mistakes. 

Rhea tries to be a calm and composed person, she managed to keep up appearances for, apparently, 1000 years, but Rhea is also emotional as fuck.

But... This is where everything falls apart.

“You were given the direction - paraphrasing - to channel your inner Dumbledore?”

It’s safe to assume most people can draw parallels to “Three Houses and Harry Potter”

And Leigh falls in the biggest trap, trying to “play the game and figure out who is who” because, while I think someone replied to an earlier post about the parallel (i’m really sorry when i finally had time to reply 2 weeks had passed and i didn’t want to necropost), but I still firmly disagree, and truth to be told, this is, in a way, what I was afraid of when 3H was announced.

FE is a series that loves to reference itself, so when it was announced that the next game would be set in a school, and Bernie and Dorothea were previewed I grew really afraid that the game was going to have the typical “North American High School AU” and none of the “Fire Emblem” series. We had the recluse, Sylvain appeared to be the frat boy, I was expecting the cheerleader, Ignatz to be the nerd etc etc.

With the HP thing, and “trying to see who is who”, I feel like the localisation team and the VA were trying to look at the game with a special - tailored by them for their own use - lens. I will not say “western” lens, but they were trying to look for things that just... aren’t?

Yes, 3H took inspiration from the latest behemoth who was trending at that time, but it wasn’t HP, it was ASOIAF. 

And even then, it is only a flair and a colour scheme. 

If Edel isn’t enough, the Golden Deer, with its specific color scheme immediately calls back to the Baratheon sigil (a black stag on a field of gold, when the Golden Deer is a deer... on a field of gold). House Lannister and Arryn are reversed, the Lion isn’t associated to the Red House but to the Blue one, and the Eagle (actually the Arryn sigil is a falcon) leaves the Moon to the Blue House and lands in the Red House. And the Ashen Wolves are... grey wolves on a white field, like this house. IS managed to take animals from traditional european heraldry, but with the colors and the specific animals picked? It’s hard to deny the ASOIAF nod.

Hubert calls the mole people snakes, but it is his own nickname, the death cult has its own name, Agarthans. They never use a snake of their banner, nor refer to themselves as such.

Bar the aesthetics? 

IS wanted the monastery to be a nod to FE Jugdral’s Barahra Royal Academy, a place where, apparently, heirs of various nations could study together and form lasting friendships, which were supposed to prevent wars (or at least made former alumnis of said academy sad to fight against each other).

But because FE Jugdral wasn’t released overseas, and someone didn’t do their homework about the series (when Toyonaga is a big fan of the Jugdral saga), the monastery, and its academy, was linked to... HP.

Rhea isn’t Dumbledore. Rhea is an amalgation of Gotoh - the mentor who guides you - and, twist, of Tiki! 

If Seteth doubted Billy’s abilities, it is tied to their own nature as a self-insert, Fred doubted Robin when they first met, but then mellowed out. Or, without the avatar angle, when Greil trusts Ike, and later on, Titania, Shinon doubts him until the end (or until you recruit him).

So with a blurred lens, it is no wonder why localised!Rhea is so different from Inoue!Rhea. 

Then Leigh continues on with the interview, noting how insecure she is, irl, and how Rhea helped her realise that “sometimes I don’t need to try to be someone else to fit it, it’s okay to just be myself” ...

:/

How can the direction give this impression of Rhea to her VA when Rhea, her character, is the complete opposite? 

Rhea tries to be someone else, she laments about it, she cannot be herself, she has to put on a facade and make careful choices and pick certain words as an archbishop, Rhea has to anonymously ask how to tell people she doesn’t like hot tea because she is afraid of hurting feelings, she wants to socialise with people but cannot due to her station and the role she has. Rhea has to pretend to be a guide and a leader to her people, when she only wants her Mother to return to assume this role she thinks she is butchering.

So, doubling Rhea should actually have the opposite effect, Rhea cannot “just be (her)self”! or maybe it’d be an advice Leigh gives to Rhea, the character?

So if you take the blurred lens coupled with the tragic direction given, Rhea’s depth is erased. She is instead turned into the scary fanatic who never emotes, save to raeg, and only wants to rez her mom.

Cute moment though, even if the topic is one I disagree on, where, talking about Rhea’s temper, Leigh says she wouldn’t want to encounter her when she’s stuck in traffic :) (lbr we all know Rhea would pull out the wings and reactor of her DeLorean and fly over everyone, without Billy though, she cannot time travel)

Tl; dr : Imposing doesn’t mean frightening, Leigh and the interviewer watched too much DBZ and ASOIAF (rather, GOT) was the “western” behemoth referenced in FE16, not HP. 

The other referenced behemoth was... well, a small series called Fire Emblem.

As always, I’m more willing to cut some slack for the VAs because the industries is more recent than the one in Japan, and/or roles weren’t directed the same way (do you know the guy who dubs Morgan Freeman in Wonder France also dubs the voice talking during Uncle Ben’s ads? Or Bruce Willis is in Martin Mystery?)

But the Directors? No. Games have been imported and translated/localised for several decades now, you can’t pull a “4Kids” anymore on content you do not understand or do not wish to understand, and butchering a character (or misunderstand a character that much) shouldn’t have happened in 2019. 

Dub is nice, when it exists, but for now, I’m still going to stick to Sub.