Before you reload: have you understood what her Trance does? It's trickier than it first appear, but it's also devastating once you understands how it works.
You get a long period of wandering in dungeons for Zidane and company, and barely any for Dagger and Steiner at this point. In some games they were still learning their basic intro abilities at this point, so level and AP grinding at some point isn't too out of sorts.
Anyways, now that Omi has gotten the FF7 version of Beta, I guess there goes any difficulty for any fight with Dagger in them for quite a while.
Before you reload: have you understood what her Trance does? It's trickier than it first appear, but it's also devastating once you understands how it works.
That's not true!! You need to play the specific ATEs in the right order and then you have to run into the four-armed man and then talk to him before he walks out of the screen or you miss the payoff!! It's missable!!!
You know, I wonder if Kuja has like… A social life. Does he have a home? Does he attend galas or have servants? Or is he the kind of spooky bastard like Sephiroth who just manifests out of the aether when it's time to do ominous shit? There's nothing of particular note on sale at the auction today, so it would seem to indicate the former: he's just doing this for entertainment.
Do the Final Fantasy Villains Have Social Lives, a short investigation by me
Okay, first off, OBVIOUSLY the Emperor is the "lounge on a divan eating peeled grapes, waiting for the next gladiator match, while a hundred dancing slaves bring in a banquet of gold-leaf-covered roasts and the finest sugared dates"-kind of guy. We're lucky he showed up to fight us at all, really. He and Kuja would get along great!
Zemus is so single-minded that that single mind literally jumped out of his head to attack us, so I think we can say he's not exactly touring the opera circuit in the depths of the Red Moon. This extends to poor Golbez, who was secretly delighted to slip off into cryosleep, because it spared him from having to develop an actual hobby, meet new people, etc.
Exdeath is an inhuman amalgamation of sinners mixed inside of a sentient tree, so by all rights, he must be completely alien to us. But the man employs Gilgamesh, and you don't do that for security, you do it for entertainment. I am convinced you could sit both of them in front of Saturday morning cartoons and you'd buy yourself a week of free adventuring.
Gestahl has done almost nothing but public appearances for the last few decades, and he has resented every second of it. Oddly, that puts him par with pre-Nibelheim Sephiroth, someone I wouldn't have clocked as a social peer, and yet...!
"Does Kefka have a social life?" you ask. Pah! Does the Cloud of Darkness have a social life? We already know perfectly well how THEY like to spend their spare time, because we spent two entire video games trying to mop it up! Besides, Kefka hasn't been invited to any parties since The Great Ipecac Incident.
Post-Nibelheim Sephiroth is kind of in a coma, and Jenova's not exactly into the club scene, so we'll skip ahead to Folmarv and Hashmal. One of my favourite things about Folmarv is that, even though he was possessed by an age-old furry shunned by both man and god, he still went out of his way to try to bring his kids into the fold. This is a man who still has time for family even as his kids age into adulthood and/or occulthood. In another world, another life, they're maybe even getting along. Folmarv's wearing a "Kiss the Cook" apron while he works the grill, having a pleasant chat with Meliadoul about college, and how have your grades been, and when are we going to meet your girlfriend... He keeps TRYING to talk to Isilud even though the guy won't look up from his smartphone, and then one well-intentioned comment goes awry, voices start rising, accusations thrown, someone turns into a lion and starts trying to overthrow church and state, Thanksgiving is ruined... Ah, the holidays bring us all together.
Ultima is a bit of a blank, but Ultimecia and Xande are easy to work with: they both hate their social lives SO MUCH that they did everything in their power to eliminate the concept of "spare time" altogether. Someone invited Ultimecia to a book club and she introvert'd so hard she achieved time compression. They're the polar opposite of Chaos, who loves life so much he wants to live it an infinite number of times. What do you think he plans to do with all that time, though, does he rope Kraken and Marilith over to play Settlers of Catan? Or is he one of those tabletop RPG DMs whose campaigns would take infinite lifetimes to complete? Don't look at me, Lich, he keeps saying each session is the "final" one but we all know that lost all meaning years ago!
Bonus Lightning Round, spoiler-free, no details allowed: Do the sequel villains have a social life? II:SoR: Yes.IV-i: No.TAY: Yes.LotC: Yes and I have a really funny answer about talk radio but sometimes you have to kill your darlings.CC: Don't insult me, we all know the answer.BC: Blanket yes.AC: If only.DoC: Yes.FFT Sound Novels: Blanket yes, though note that I have decided the villain of Nanai's Histories is the narrator.Chocobo World: No he spends all his time playing with his Tamagotchi.
Depends, really, on how long Saint Ajora spent being possessed, and how 'social' Ultima-as-Ajora was with the followers thereof - we know Ajora was a vessel for Ultima by the end of the events that got turned into the Church of Glabados' central myth, but, well, we saw with a few of the Lucavi vessels that it can take a bit for the actual possession to occur even when the host is compatible and holding onto the Auracite, given the example of Dycedarg seemingly going from 'mostly just slightly more open about being an asshole who is willing to go to any lengths for his ambitions' to "So this is what it is to be a god" in the time-span of one beatdown despite having had his hands on Adramalech's Stone for some time by that point.
Basically, Ultima-as-Ajora could have been anywhere from 'ironically a more pleasant person to be around than the original Ajora' to 'barely tolerated anyone not also a Lucavi' to 'spent exactly five seconds in control of the body before getting shanked,' and I'm not sure we'll ever know, and, well, it's hard to draw any conclusions for Ultima-as-Alma since she ditches that body near instantly.
This is... a lot of words to say "I agree with you but it's possible she had one while possessing Ajora" I guess.
Jenova absolutely is into club scene, that's how she orchestrated the fall of the Ancients.
Many words were spent on how much Sephiroth is still himself and how much of him was lost to an alien virus, and I think this aspect is all him.
He was like, "I'm nothing but an experiment, not even human anymore but a host to that... thing, the devourer of planets... Thank God, I don't have to attend corporate mixers anymore!"
further data: random NPCs in Treno appear to recognize Steiner as a knight, when he talks to them. They might not like knights, calling them 偉そう "era-sou", meaning "arrogant", but they do see Steiner and think "knight". Which is a change from Lindblum, where Steiner is wearing the exact same armour and the guards still see him as "just a middle-aged man".
Come to think of it, I don't think the Dali villagers recognized Steiner as a knight either. They barely recognize "Pluto Knights of Alexandria", in the same way one might barely recall something heard in passing three months ago. I'm not sure what that means for the status of knights in the setting.
It probably just means that the Knights of Pluto mostly stay in the Alexandrian capital, so they and their uniform are less well known the farther you get from there. Lindblum is an entirely different country and Dali is a backwater which was probably chosen for it's secret project because so few people go there (making the heroes finding it by chance ironic).
This is a consequence of previous translation decisions. The "Soft" item in FFIX is 金の針 "kin no hari", which is "Gold Needle". This has been consistent throughout the Final Fantasy games in Japanese, and I believe in current games with a more generous item name length, it has been translates correctly. So "Soft" was likely the compromise for older games with shorter item name lengths.
But FFIX decided to keep using "Soft", and now Marcus says they are looking for "Supersoft". In Japanese, this is 白金の針 "hakkin no hari", literally "white gold needle", but more properly Platinum Needle. Personally I feel losing the "Gold to Platinum" upgrade, and just going "non-Super to Super", is missing out on a degree of poetry.
Slightly off topic, but this has just given me a revelation - this is what Miquella's Needle is referencing! I've always wondered why the unalloyed gold needle has cursebreaking properties, but it's a specific thing that already exists as a concept! Today I Learned, thank you.
Well, while thinking a bit just now about how that phrasing works, I did realize there's a potential alternate interpretation to just those two becoming nobles: View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlP9x-5pwsM
...Huh. So that's... the second time now that FFIX has reminded Omi of a notably unpleasant experience from his own childhood. ...Sorry, Omi, but I do find myself somewhat morbidly curious whether it'll be the last.
It occurs to me that the guy saying this is in fact a soldier wearing a pointy hat, so I think we might even be in a situation where he means the soldiers are wearing a different style of pointy hat than has historically been used by soldiers. Or maybe we should say he's wearing a pointy hood, and he is shocked at this stunning break from military tradition, that they are wearing pointy hats instead of pointy hoods.
It does seem rather odd that this mysterious and ominous force of magic-wielding invaders, capable of toppling an entire nation, is primarily distinguished and recognized by their pointy hats, as though there is no other feature warranting mention.
Imagine being an army recognized throughout history solely by one's headwear.
Besides, given Kuja's obsession with beauty, one might assume he would have dressed his Black Mage automatons more fabulously. At least add some sequins to those pointy hats.
That's not true!! You need to play the specific ATEs in the right order and then you have to run into the four-armed man and then talk to him before he walks out of the screen or you miss the payoff!! It's missable!!!
I'm going to take this opportunity to complain a bit about the ATE trigger traps in this section, especially when I am working with the Japanese titles for the ATEs, while the walkthrough I'm using is (understandably) using the English titles.
The player absolutely needs to watch the correct ATEs in the correct order to see them all, and there is no indication which are the "correct" ATEs at the moment. This is because the ATEs are actually showing the progression of the characters through Treno, with Marcus going through the slums (Ambition) on his way to meet Baku (Meeting Place), while Dagger first gets pickpocketed (Treno Tradition), chases after the pickpocket (Pursuit), then gives up and starts looking for the Supersoft (Confusion) before ending up at the Auction House (Unexpected Visitor).
So if you keep following Dagger's path through the ATEs and putting off Ambition on Marcus's path, you might end up seeing the option to watch Meeting Place, not know what it's about, select it, and thus miss out on Ambition entirely. This happened to me, and I had to reload a save from outside Treno to redo the ATEs. Not that big a problem due to fast-forward, and I could get through them quicker since I know I already noted down any interesting translation bits.
This whole situation seems to be due to Treno's ATEs being based on the location of your currently-controlled character, rather than simply "have you seen the previous ATEs" and queuing them up like in Dali and Lindblum. I don't know why it was done this way, and I don't know why they couldn't have stuck with the "queue ATEs" method.
The bit I had problems with were the ATEs titled "Meeting Place" and "Unexpected Visitor". These, in Japanese, are 再会 "saikai" and 存在 "sonzai" respectively. 再会 means "reunion", and 存在 means "existence", and I had to guess which corresponded to which ATE, especially since I didn't know if the English translation took further liberties. Did "reunion" mean Marcus meeting Baku again, or was it the player's "reunion" with Kuja at the Auction House? Did "existence" mean the existence of the "meeting place", or the existence of the "unexpected visitor"?
I was curious about this, because the weapon shop in Treno is referred to as "Knight's house," but when we talk to the shopkeeper, she says it is owned by the Knight family.
It does seem to be that case, but as I may have mentioned, I have zero trust in what Final Fantasy games intend with their katakana transliterations.
Taking just this game alone, the interpretation of "the family named Knight" seems valid: ナイト "naito" as a direct katakana transliteration of "knight" (or "night"), instead of 騎士 "kishi" as the actual title of "knight". This matches with "Queen Stella", who seems to be addressed by name as "Queen".
(I forget the exact wording, but the dialogue box does say it's "the noble Knight family" or words to that effect. ナイト貴族家 or something.)
The lack of trust is due to taking into consideration other Final Fantasy games. We've seen it previously in Final Fantasy Tactics, and the example I definitely know of is FFXIV. In FFT, ナイト is "knight", as a Job class: "Holy Knight", "Divine Knight", and such. Actual knights as in the story are 騎士 for the most part, but I don't recall if there are any exceptions where 騎士 is used for the Job class name too.
And then there's FFXIV, which we know is translated based on the current Final Fantasy style guide at Square Enix, where there is a ナイト Job, subtitled in Japanese as "Knight", and in English named Paladin.
Hence zero trust. If I had to narrow my focus to only FFIX and ignore all other Final Fantasy games, I'd agree that this is referring to "the noble family named Knight". There might even be a potential chess theme happening in Treno, given "Queen" as well.
But with the other Final Fantasy games in consideration, I cannot be confident this is the case. I don't actually know what style guide FFIX is following for the translation, especially since we've also seen Freya described as "Dragon Knight" instead of "Dragoon". Which is its own translation tangle, especially since 竜騎士 also contains the 騎士 term for the Job class...
Amusingly, all of the titles which have an Italian translation have the item translated to "Golden Needle" (Ago Dorato), and the "Supersoft" is, in fact, the Platinum Needle (Ago di Platino). That's because the PSX did have the naming space to accommodate giving that name to the item; I believe the English PSX titles kept to "Soft" for continuity with FFIV and FFVI, which had an USA release and used those names, but we never had Italian translations of those titles - FFVIII was the first in the series to be translated in Italian - and therefore the translation didn't need to compromise and/or use a legacy name.
NPC #2: "That's right!! It totally skipped my mind! There was something I was supposed to tell you. That's right! It's about that! It was yesterday. A man wearing a black cape came up from the ocean. I think he had tickets for the Gold Saucer… No, that wasn't it… I wonder if it was all just an illusion.
The black-wearing Sephiroth clone that the party had been chasing, possibly piloted by Jenova, took the time to buy tickets for the Gold Saucer. Thus demonstrating an awareness of currency to purchase goods and services, of the concept of "tickets" to access otherwise restricted areas, and of the Gold Saucer.
Depending on which consciousness one believes is in charge of the Sephiroth clones, that is absolutely a knowledge of the setting's equivalent of the Club Scene.
Slightly off topic, but this has just given me a revelation - this is what Miquella's Needle is referencing! I've always wondered why the unalloyed gold needle has cursebreaking properties, but it's a specific thing that already exists as a concept! Today I Learned, thank you.
To be honest I'm not quite certain why there is this belief that a Gold Needle specifically cures status ailments like Petrify, or apparently Curses in other games. It's just a thing that happens in Final Fantasy games, and it might also have been in previous games or media references from earlier, but I don't know the history.
The most I could Google is how this might be a reference to acupuncture, but I don't know much about acupuncture, so I don't know if there is a tradition in using golden needles (or gold-plated, possibly) for better results. And the association in Final Fantasy between "Gold Needle" and "Petrify" seems rather specific.
It seems like the sort of association from a myth or legend somewhere, involving statues and gold needles, but I don't know of any, so maybe someone more versed in Japanese folklore might have more insights.
It does seem to be that case, but as I may have mentioned, I have zero trust in what Final Fantasy games intend with their katakana transliterations.
Taking just this game alone, the interpretation of "the family named Knight" seems valid: ナイト "naito" as a direct katakana transliteration of "knight" (or "night"), instead of 騎士 "kishi" as the actual title of "knight". This matches with "Queen Stella", who seems to be addressed by name as "Queen".
(I forget the exact wording, but the dialogue box does say it's "the noble Knight family" or words to that effect. ナイト貴族家 or something.)
The lack of trust is due to taking into consideration other Final Fantasy games. We've seen it previously in Final Fantasy Tactics, and the example I definitely know of is FFXIV. In FFT, ナイト is "knight", as a Job class: "Holy Knight", "Divine Knight", and such. Actual knights as in the story are 騎士 for the most part, but I don't recall if there are any exceptions where 騎士 is used for the Job class name too.
And then there's FFXIV, which we know is translated based on the current Final Fantasy style guide at Square Enix, where there is a ナイト Job, subtitled in Japanese as "Knight", and in English named Paladin.
Hence zero trust. If I had to narrow my focus to only FFIX and ignore all other Final Fantasy games, I'd agree that this is referring to "the noble family named Knight". There might even be a potential chess theme happening in Treno, given "Queen" as well.
But with the other Final Fantasy games in consideration, I cannot be confident this is the case. I don't actually know what style guide FFIX is following for the translation, especially since we've also seen Freya described as "Dragon Knight" instead of "Dragoon". Which is its own translation tangle, especially since 竜騎士 also contains the 騎士 term for the Job class...
Considering that, as I mentioned, the English translation is using a theme naming based around Chess, is it possible that was also the intended reference in Japanese?
The places to check would be the name of the owners of the Synthesis and Armor shop, which are Bishop and Knight, as well as double check if, when Tot references his "tower", there's any way that could be construed as a reference to "rook" - I don't know the exact terminology in Japanese, but in Italian the "rook" piece on Chess is just named "Tower", which is why the connection is easier to identify, so I wouldn't put it past the original Japanese script to have some form of pun related to that.
Considering that, as I mentioned, the English translation is using a theme naming based around Chess, is it possible that was also the intended reference in Japanese?
The places to check would be the name of the owners of the Synthesis and Armor shop, which are Bishop and Knight, as well as double check if, when Tot references his "tower", there's any way that could be construed as a reference to "rook" - I don't know the exact terminology in Japanese, but in Italian the "rook" piece on Chess is just named "Tower", which is why the connection is easier to identify, so I wouldn't put it past the original Japanese script to have some form of pun related to that.
On the one hand, I don't know where to check for the name of the owner of the Synthesis shop, and outside of that initial conversation with the Weapons shop owner about the monster under the grate, I also cannot find a way to repeat the conversation about the Knight family.
However, I do have a workaround for that, if we're allowed to take evidence that is technically not in the game:
This is what my gameplay window usually looks like, since I play in Windowed Mode using the Memoria launcher. This means I can see the program application header in the window, and here it says "Map 901 (トレノ/ビショップ家)".
This is located just outside the Synthesis shop, as in after entering the building but before going to the shop screen proper. The Japanese text does, indeed, say "Treno / Bishop House". Similarly, the Weapons shop interior is "Treno / Knight House".
And on the screens outside the buildings themselves, they're listed as "house-name 家前", which is "in front of the house". Such as クイーン家前 for the screen just outside the Stellazio building, ie "in front of Queen House".
So there does seem to be a chess theme, with Queen, Knight, and Bishop.
As for Tot's Tower, though, I don't think it's part of the theme. The area in front of the tower (ie where Dagger got pickpocketed) is simply 回廊 "kairou", meaning "corridor" or "passageway", and the top of the tower itself is トット家, ie "Tot House". (The stairs are "Tot House Stairs".)
I don't see any other areas in Treno which have the chess theme. The Auction House and Card Stadium are named as they are.
For the main point, the large words are クワン洞 "kuwan hora", which does translate to "Quan Cave".
The subtitle is where it gets odd. It looks like the words are 幽幻の岩屋 "yuu gen no iwaya", and I'll have to split it up to explain.
岩屋 is literally "stone house" ("house" as in dwelling, rather than family), and I believe it usually gets translated as "cavern" or "grotto", although I'm not sure if that's perfectly accurate to geology. (On checking Wikipedia, it looks like "grotto" in the sense of "cave used by people" is the closer term.)
幽幻 is the weird part. 幽 "yuu" is associated with "deep", "hidden", "tranquil", and other such mystery-related adjectives; 幽霊 "yuurei", literally "hidden spirit", is the term for "ghost" and "spectre". 幻 "gen" or "maboroshi" is a familiar word from FFVIII, where it gets repeated in Sorceress Edea's rant about showing the world an "illusion" and "fantasy".
However, I'm not sure I've seen 幽幻 together as a term before. I have seen another word with the same pronunciation: 幽玄 "yuugen", which means "mysterious and profound", or perhaps "mysteriously profound". It's the sort of descriptor used for the unfathomable and indescribable, usually in spiritual topics.
Therefore, I think this is an instance of the Japanese writers taking a known term, and substituting one of the kanji for another with a similar pronunciation, thus creating a new term that is a mix of the original definition, plus the individual definitions of each kanji in the new term. Here, 幽幻 would probably mean "mysterious illusion" or something to that effect.
Together, 幽幻の岩屋 would be "Grotto Of Illusions". Which makes Quan either a particularly enlightened and spiritual Qu who understands the world is but a fleeting dream and there is no spoon, or he's a tryhard chuuni.
This does look like the English translation decided to add in comedy. In Japanese, the inscription is "Vivi, half a year since I picked him up, still no signs of growth/getting taller".
"Picked up" here is 拾って "hirotte", which is used less for adopting children, and more for "picked up a wallet" or "picked up a stray puppy".
Quan also evidently adds the Qu verbal tic "-aru" in writing.
The rest of the points of interest in the area are as in the English text. I have no idea what any of it means; the clock did indeed stop on the date a week before Dagger left Alexandria. Maybe this is supposed to imply Vivi left Quan's cave that day, and it took him a week to get to Alexandria for the start of the game? Picking up his fake ticket on the way, of course.
Which would, as noted, take a bit of doing, because the monsters around Treno include some nasty encounters, and then there's the Gate Passes. Did Vivi hitch a ride with someone from Treno?
Doctor Tot is another of these characters Steiner treats with clear respect as someone above his station, and immediately tells him he regrets his "earlier actions."
Steiner greets Tot with utmost respect, and Tot goes "oh, you were here too?"
This is despite Tot already noticing Steiner back when they were infiltrating the Synthesis shop. Where Tot recognized Steiner via Steiner's "needlessly forced tone of voice" (むやみにかた苦しい口調), and telling him to quiet down before the shop owner hears.
There is a certain sense that Tot is not, perhaps, thoroughly impressed by Steiner.
For a more charitable read, Tot might be using his polite note of Steiner being present as an implicit question of what Steiner was doing participating in the aborted heist. Which Steiner answers with a regulation "I acknowledge that was behaviour unbecoming of a knight", which isn't exactly an answer, but Tot does let it go.
Also when Marcus picks up the Supersoft, Steiner yells at him to show gratitude, but Tot goes "it's fine". So of course Steiner complains that he has to associate with "thieves who do not know manners", which amuses me more than it should.
Tot: "Two phrases are commonly found in documents more than 500 years old… One is 'jewel.' The other is 'summoner tribe.' But 500 years ago, the phrases mysteriously vanished from history…" Tot: "The archeologist Frederick Ash theorized that 'jewel' refers to the pendant passed down to the ruler of Alexandria. But the pendant… It is much too small to be referring to the same 'jewel.' Other research suggests a relationship between 'eidolons' and magical 'stones'..."
召喚士一族 "shoukanshi ichizoku" does translate to "Summoner Tribe", as in "tribe of summon users". Pedantically, 一族 is more like a family clan, including everyone in the extended household, but still generally related to each other in some way (blood, adoption, or employment).
宝珠 "houju" is "jewel", with the literal translation being "precious orb". The shape being specifically a sphere is part of the kanji definition for 珠, but I don't know if the term is being used in a generic manner to just mean "jewel".
Tot's later line about "much too small" in Japanese does refer to the shape, 形状 "keijou". This can also be translated to "form", and the general gist is Tot wondering if the pendant of Alexandria matches the same shape/form/appearance of the "jewel". This could be stretched to include concerns about size, as the English translation mentions, but reading the Japanese text would have the player make the connection between the "jewel" being labelled as an orb, and Dagger's pendant being described as sharing the appearance of Lindblum's "Dragon's/Falcon's Claw".
"Eidolons" is the FFIX-specific term for 召喚獣 "shoukanjuu", ie "summoned beasts" from the rest of the Final Fantasy series. The "magical 'stones'" in the English text is just "stones" (石) in Japanese, but in quotation marks, so the reader knows it's referring to some special type of stone.
Tot tells Garnet that he's already read every book in this library, but that he thinks better when surrounded by old books. Garnet tells him she doesn't like books with the adorable bluntness of a child, before admitting that she is quite taken with a book Tot gifted her: I Wanna Be Your Canary. So that's where her theatre kid inclinations started.
Little Garnet says she's "bad at" difficult books, which does imply not liking them (eg someone who doesn't like eating peppers will say they are "bad at" peppers).
I took this screenshot to illustrate two things about Little Garnet's dialogue: first, her personal pronoun is "atashi", which is considered especially cute and girlish (Yuffie in FFVII was clearly trying to adopt that pronoun), and so Tot has to scold her and tell her to use the ultra-formal "watakushi", which we know Princess Garnet Til Alexandros was using up until Zidane told her to stop. In this flashback exchange, Little Garnet does switch to exaggerated formal speech until she gets tired of it a few dialogue boxes later.
Secondly, Little Garnet calls books ご本 for some reason (as opposed to simply 本 "hon"). I have no idea what that means, but I'm guessing it's the 御 prefix rendered in hiragana, and Little Garnet is saying "honourable books", because she thinks it's polite that way, and Tot has been using the 御 prefix plenty in his very polite speech.
Garnet is a little confused by the concept of a terrestrial globe; Tot has to explain to her that the globe is a planet, not her castle, and that there's a world beyond Alexandria. She asks him to point to her room on the globe, and it tells her it's too small, but he can show her where her castle and Uncle Cid's castle are located, and the flashback fades to black and back to the present.
I admit this dialogue box screenshot isn't in your summary, but I think it's significant enough to point out.
Tot says there is a theory that the "star" (ie planet, in FF-speak) has some sort of power/energy, which leads to life on that planet. And this theory is where the idea of the connection between "stones" and "summoning" comes from.
I noticed this because my immediate reaction was "LIFESTREEEEAAAAM" and "AETHERIAL SEEEEAAA".
Specifically, Tot saw the broken globe and thought it was "cool" (粋 "iki"), so he repaired it enough to be his observation deck. I suppose he'd use words like "sophisticated" or "refined".
The subtitle is 古根の道 "furu ne no michi", which works out to be "path of old roots". Probably intended to be a poetic way of saying "ancient tunnels".
Wiktionary says "rue" is French for "road" or "street", so maybe it's "Gargan Rue"?
Also as it turns out this is where we learn the name of House Bishop. Tot told the head of the house about these tunnels, and suggested they renovate it. Not entirely sure how Treno's layout works, so I don't know how close the Synthesis shop and Tot's tower are to each other, but Tot did apparently appear in the Synthesis shop when we met him, so they clearly know each other.
The action house is called "The Maison du Roi" in Italian - which is french for "House of the King" - and I believe it's referred to as "the King's House" in the English version? Am I misremembering things?
The action house called "The Maison du Roi" in Italian - which is french for "House of the King" - and I believe it's referred to as "the King's House" in the English version? Am I misremembering things?
The action house called "The Maison du Roi" in Italian - which is french for "House of the King" - and I believe it's referred to as "the King's House" in the English version? Am I misremembering things?
When you were a kid, did your parents ask you to stand against a wall so they could make a tally mark to measure how you grew? My father did. And so did Quan, apparently: There's a series of marks in the wall measuring heights. This is more informative than it looks, because it tells us Vivi wasn't spawned fully-formed like the Black Mage dolls, he did grow up from a baby into a child.
There is also something else written next to these measures.
QUAN ADOPTED VIVI AS A SNACK. THEY WERE PLANNING TO EAT HIM!!!
This does look like the English translation decided to add in comedy. In Japanese, the inscription is "Vivi, half a year since I picked him up, still no signs of growth/getting taller".
"Picked up" here is 拾って "hirotte", which is used less for adopting children, and more for "picked up a wallet" or "picked up a stray puppy".
...seems like the normally good (or at least much better than 7, which admittedly isn't a high bar to clear) English translation might have just totally messed things up. Vivi being born full-grown just like Alexandria's mindless black mages is incredibly important for his connection with them. Not even to mention the difference between getting adopted as some weird curiosity and getting adopted as a snack.
Tot says there is a theory that the "star" (ie planet, in FF-speak) has some sort of power/energy, which leads to life on that planet. And this theory is where the idea of the connection between "stones" and "summoning" comes from.
I noticed this because my immediate reaction was "LIFESTREEEEAAAAM" and "AETHERIAL SEEEEAAA".
Admittedly, because of the game immediately preceding this one in this LP, I went with 星 as literal stars, which, coupled with 石 ("stone") and 召喚 ("summoning"), my reaction was more "Lucavi sighted, don't touch the Zodiac Stones!"
Tot says there is a theory that the "star" (ie planet, in FF-speak) has some sort of power/energy, which leads to life on that planet. And this theory is where the idea of the connection between "stones" and "summoning" comes from.
I noticed this because my immediate reaction was "LIFESTREEEEAAAAM" and "AETHERIAL SEEEEAAA".
Wait, so Star was used for Planet in earlier FF games? Is that an FF thing that was only included in translations in 14, or a Japanese thing that was improperly translated in 14 and they ran with it,
Wait, so Star was used for Planet in earlier FF games? Is that an FF thing that was only included in translations in 14, or a Japanese thing that was improperly translated in 14 and they ran with it,
Wait, so Star was used for Planet in earlier FF games? Is that an FF thing that was only included in translations in 14, or a Japanese thing that was improperly translated in 14 and they ran with it,
The Japanese word for "Star", "Hoshi", has the exact same historical meaning as the English word "Star", that is, "shiny point of light in the sky." In English we distinguished between Fixed Stars and Wandering Stars, where the direct translation of "Planet" is from the ancient Greek "Wander". I am given to understand that the Japanese "Hoshi" has retained the more archaic definition that English used to have for "Star," the "point of light in sky" one.
