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Who's your favorite?

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 7:38 am
by fuzors9
Please vote!!!

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 2:19 pm
by lutomboy
But there was no Jessica :cry: WHY IS THE WORLD SO CRUEL :P

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 3:15 pm
by Benevolent_Ghaleon
What Lunar fan can have favorites?

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 7:21 pm
by Kizyr
lutomboy wrote:But there was no Jessica :cry: WHY IS THE WORLD SO CRUEL :P
Did you not notice that this was posted in the Lunar: Eternal Blue forum?

Jessica wasn't in EB.

That said, I'm for Jean and Leo. Can't quite decide between the two, however. KF

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 7:57 pm
by Alunissage
Benevolent_Ghaleon wrote:What Lunar fan can have favorites?
Any fan who wants to. Duh.

Leo gets my vote.

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 8:23 pm
by Werefrog
Kizyr wrote: Jessica wasn't in EB.
Pfft... you just don't know the correct code. It's the same one that you use to bring Aeris (My first instinct was to spell that with a -th. Must fight instinct!) back to life.

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 8:29 pm
by Dark_Fairy
My vote goes to Ghaleon! ^_^

He my favorite Lunar character...period. Second favorite character is Jean.

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 9:38 pm
by ilovemyguitar
Vote Leo!

Not only is he the most well-developed character in the game, he's also the only character that I think could viably hold his own in battle without the rest of the party as support.

And this reminds me. When's our next character tournament gonna be? The last one was wicked fun.

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 10:58 pm
by Kizyr
ilovemyguitar wrote:And this reminds me. When's our next character tournament gonna be? The last one was wicked fun.
We're planning something a little different this year. KF

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 1:03 am
by DezoPenguin
Werefrog wrote:
Kizyr wrote: Jessica wasn't in EB.
Pfft... you just don't know the correct code. It's the same one that you use to bring Aeris (My first instinct was to spell that with a -th. Must fight instinct!) back to life.
Actually, Square finally woke up and remembered that it was supposed to be a -th in its more recent entries in the series (KHII, for example...I think Advent Children, as well).

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 1:24 am
by Werefrog
I refuse to spell it with a -th. I'm disappointed that that I even think about spelling it that way.

The only thing that would change my mind would be if someone could present a compelling argument that the developers spelled her name Aerith to imply a connection between her and Sephiroth since they were both supposedly ancients. (That turns out to be incorrect, right? The plot of FF7 is so convoluted that I sometimes forget what was the truth and what was a setup for a ridiculous plot-twist.)

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 2:32 am
by Benevolent_Ghaleon
Aerith is how you'd say it with a speech impediment.

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 2:35 am
by Kizyr
DezoPenguin wrote:Actually, Square finally woke up and remembered that it was supposed to be a -th in its more recent entries in the series (KHII, for example...I think Advent Children, as well).
How is it 'supposed' to be Aerith? Aeris actually sounds normal. Aerith is just weird.

Besides which, Japanese developers have a pretty poor track record of natural-sounding names. Hence why most of the Lunar ones were changed in some fashion. With the exception of Lunar: DS... but that just used a bunch of Old Testament names. KF

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 6:09 am
by Temzin
Heh, "Aeris" may be easier to say, but it's still supposed to be "Aerith" because...that's the name the creators chose. Aerith is correct even if it may or may not be aesthetically pleasing, and it's the name that was then converted to kana, and which in turn was translated (badly, along with the rest of the game) to English without proper consultation of the original names which are English. Oh well.

Werefrog, I can't fulfill your wish that "Aerith" connect with Sephiroth linguistically (after all, "Sephiroth" is Hebrew and "Aerith" is not), but I can at least point to the FFVII Kaitai Shinsho book that has the developers' note that the name was created as a modified anagram of "Earth" for obvious reasons, so that may be some consolation, no? Who knew VII would pop up in this thread of all places, but there you have it.

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 6:18 am
by Kizyr
"Aerith" and "Aeris" sound the same in a Japanese accent. If you're going to localize a game, you may as well transliterate the names in a fashion that looks better to English speakers.

This is why I generally agree with WD's approach on things... The pop-culture things aside, everything else they do is pretty good since the focus is always on the English translation, not how Japanese it sounds. KF

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 6:24 am
by Temzin
Oh, of course. But the funny thing about Square, at least, is that they design their English names first, it seems, complete with last names, so that does sort of make them the authoritative ones, whether one likes it in English or not. I wouldn't dare to change a character's name in a book I was translating, for instance, but then, maybe that's why the term "localization" makes me uncomfortable anyhow.

In strange contrast, Game Arts always ended up with these completely insane English names for their characters, and I often assumed that at least some of them were the result of the English names not having been planned first...hence the appearance of clear mistakes like "Dain" instead of "Dyne." And don't even get me started on "Lucier," a mistake so clear and ugly that it's convinced me that they designed the names in Japanese first, at least for Lunar. The strange thing was that certain names DO seem as though there was an English notion first for Game Arts---remember the notes in the Lunar I&II Design Materials about how Arhes was envisioned as a modification of "Earth" (how a propos, given the Aerith=Earth bit)?

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:50 pm
by DezoPenguin
Temzin wrote:Oh, of course. But the funny thing about Square, at least, is that they design their English names first, it seems, complete with last names, so that does sort of make them the authoritative ones, whether one likes it in English or not. I wouldn't dare to change a character's name in a book I was translating, for instance, but then, maybe that's why the term "localization" makes me uncomfortable anyhow
Well, the book analogy is slightly different because there would only be the in-book text to deal with, so you'd have more freedom to pick the "best" romanization. What separates this is that the creators picked a romanized name to begin with (and, incidentally, showed that they can actually handle English-language names with correct handling of names like "Barret Wallace," "Vincent Valentine," "Cloud Strife," "Lockhart," "Sephiroth" (bungle the spelling of that one and a world of meaning goes into the trash...), "Red XIII," "Highwind," and so on, so that you can assume idiosyncratic spellings and names like, say, "Yuffie," are chosen intentionally instead of out of a lack of Latin-alphabet skills).

Of course, I'm biased, since I was talking FFVII with assorted Japanese-speaking importing friends online and got quite used to "Aerith" for a good six to eight months before I got the English version and started going, "What did they change that for?!"

Then again, I'd say the definitive answer to "Why is 'Aerith' correct?" is "Because Square/Enix took the trouble to change it back in their latter-day romanizations. If they didn't care (or if they considered continuity more important than accuracy), they'd have just left it "Aeris" as they did in FFTactics.

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 6:46 am
by phyco126
I never understood the whole ""aerith" vs. "Aeris" debate.

1. Who cares? I can better spend my time finding the cure for cancer, or pwning napoleon on Civ IV. =P
2. If the Th is silent and pronounced as "s" anyway, what is the problem with changing it to "s" if it would mean that the name would be pronounced right?
3. If I ever find the comics from Loserz that dealt with this dilema, I would post it. Not the nicest ones in the world, but I couldn't blame the man either.

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 10:14 am
by lost_f0n_drive
I voted for Leo.

He was definetly the best character in Blue.

Re: Who's your favorite?

Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 2:14 am
by phyco126