Part 47: Debrief

Chapter 7 debrief

Props to Mireille and Mathias at the end for lobbying to get the Atelier Ranking System restarted, just for the twins. That’ll be picked right back up in Chapter 8! And then Roger suddenly went and vanished, but… we’ll get to that later!

Anyway, Ilmeria is our second DLC character, added along with the version 1.03 update! But 1.03 didn’t just add Ilmeria—Gust got Maria Naganawa, Hikaru Akao, Kaede Hondo and Sayaka Kaneko back in the studio to record a loooooooooooot of events involving their characters. Scenes pertaining to Ilmeria joining and gameplay details about her character are of course locked behind the but you should be able to get the vast majority of 1.03 scenes regardless of whether you ponied up the extra cash. Heck, you’ve already seen some 1.03 events as early as Chapter 5, with the twins trolling Ilmeria about her first pet Puni. The SLEEP WITH FIRIS event and the event about Ilmeria’s ribbons were also added with 1.03.

None of them are necessary to attain to unlock the True Ending and frankly it’s more work for me to transcribe them, so if I don’t feel like putting them into an actual update, I’ll just add them in the debriefs as bonus content moving forward. Like with this:

1.03 Extras
Introductions

Character Art
Captain Backen OA (?)
I can’t tell who drew CAPTAAAAIN BACKEN, since the usual visual cues—the eyes—are, uh, not there.

Location Notes and Memos:
Mysterious Painting:

This world shows a pirate’s treasure trove at the bottom of the sea. It contains beautiful oceans like the painting, perfect for taking a dip in…

Bestiary Notes:

Since Kame-kichi is weak to magic, he’s by extension weak to any elemental source of damage. So he’ll fold fast to Ori Bombs and Stahl Ice Bombs, and Alt and Firis’ follow-up skills and Sophie’s offensive skills. All of which should be getting highly potent at this stage of the game.

Music:
Finding the Treasure -Lydie-
The idea behind this is to express the power and never-say-die spirit of Captain Backen. I remember being surprised at just how spooky the map design for this area was. (Yanagawa)

Finding the Treasure -Suelle-
Sue’s a lot more interested in material wealth, so I made sure to give the instruments more of a metallic twinkle. You’re probably thinking, that’s why he did that?! (Yanagawa)

Hydrangea -Part 2-
Miyoshi is on the guitar, and HIROTOMO is on the bass here. It was only when I came to prepare materials for the performers that I realized how uptempo this piece is, despite the fact that it features several difficult accents throughout. The materials therefore feature repeated apologies from me for the speed and difficulty of the piece I was asking them to play. (Yano)

Sunflower -Part 2-
The game has reached its middle section by now, and the music has become much more vibrant. As if there isn’t even time for an intro, the arrangement jumps straight in with the first verse (lol). Parts 2 and 3 also borrow phrases from the opening theme, so see if you can spot what they are! The title is a reference to my image of Sue. It doesn’t sound much like the title of a battle theme, but I like it. (Yanagawa)

Dreams of a Book (Lydie & Suelle Ver.)
Along with Sophie, Plachta has appeared in every title in the “Mysterious” series. Her character theme is well-known for its unique arrangement, so it’s certainly difficult to arrange it in a certain way. At first listen it may not seem any different from the original, but the instrumentation is actually significantly altered. (Achiwa)

Captain… Backen!
As this piece is for a comical pirate character, I was fairly concerned when I was first given this task that it might be difficult to work out how to tackle it, but a perusal of the storyline and script gave me all the inspiration I needed, and in the end it was simple. Musically, the piece features ethnic elements, while snare drums and brass instruments give it the piratical feel of the ship cutting through the waves. (Tomizawa)

Camellia Sazanka (Music Box Ver.)
Corneria’s music box. How come the music has been redone from scratch, you ask? Well, there are certain legal… Uh, no… Uh, during her trip, she needed to get it fixed, you see, and the sound must have changed, hahaha… (Yanagawa)

DEBRIEF debrief:
In Chapter 6, the twins beat a god. So Chapter 7 was thematically pretty obviously filler: the twins run around town doing odd jobs a bit, then Mireille invites them into a Mysterious Painting for a vacation, where they end up chilling with a wonderfully batshit comic relief skeleton pirate. When they’re done with their vacation that wasn’t, they learn the good news—that the Atelier Ranking System has been reinstated. But their euphoria is broken when they go home and find that Roger has left home for an indefinite period of time. With this, the plot will resume shortly.

While everything up to Chapter 6 was the twins getting involved in the Kingdom of Adalet’s plan to stave off destruction with Falgior’s return, the twins’ story will soon zoom in on their own family history. It will pick up plot threads dropped for the Falgior fight. And as much as Roger got in the way and often made things worse for the twins, they—and we—are about to find out life without him ain't exactly sunshine and roses.