You know, all this time and I just realized I never ended up making a post regarding MK2's NPCs, which is odd, since they're mostly somewhat memorable and I've been ranting about the game for like a month anyway. Since I haven't updated on anything else, might as well. Woohoo Saturday mornings. This mostly won't cover the character quest NPCs or the Puni Brothers (mostly because those are sorta part of the PCs' evaluations as it stands, really. Puniyo would be incomplete without the Puni Brothers, Corona is basically what gives dimension to Yun, etc. Well, I could open an exception for the Ex-Fairy, because that one was also the -other- saving grace for Pepperoni I failed to mention, but not all that relevant).
THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Zeppel - Jesus christ, how did you manage to become more spineless than you were back in MK1? Zeppel didn't change much from his MK1 self, the main switches being the fact he is in a setting where the madness is about ten thousand octanes higher on gear and the fact he has a very, very embarrassing porn goatee. However, the fact that the kindly but easily goaded guy in the roster is now in charge of the academy does not bide well for its running. It does justify Flay running the show like he does, though. He does have a surprisingly sweet scene with Tony in Ulrika path, too. Zeppel is also more backgroundy than ever, which sorta fits - Bernard wasn't terribly relevant either.
Marta - The Chairwoman is an ugly little bitch. Oh, and she crushes over Goto almost as hard as Lily crushes over Raze. Her raison d'etre, at first glance, is to be the main antagonist force in the game. Given how quickly her main conflict device gets solved in the script flow (she is check-mated into keeping the Alchemy class less than halfway through the game, the details of -how- being best viewed by yourself, because I can not properly describe just how deranged the events leading to it are), though, her presence is quickly relegated to being a bitch in a few side scenes and writhing in agony every time Flay gets bored (because Flay getting bored inevitably means he decided to trainwreck something big for whatever reason). While I'm sorta glad Marta just fades into the background due to just not being terribly likable and not having much to be used for, it feels like the writers just got bored of her and didn't bother past the paper-thin setup role she was given. It's kind of a waste conceptually. In practice, I just don't care, though.
Flay - Like MK1, Flay steals the scene just about every time he shows up. Like MK1, this happens very often. However, MK2 Flay obviously follows in the footsteps of MK1's ending for his CQ. I've said ten billion times that Flay ending is canon, but the game really takes the joke to absurd heights. Oh, and he's the vice-principal who Zeppel hired so he could do something about Marta wanting to shut down the Alchemy class. And somehow, he achieves this through nearly destroying the school in an almost monthly basis and encouraging carnage between students in a nearly weekly basis. It's not really supposed to make sense. The sad part is that he, while having the most screentime of any NPC, doesn't have as much screentime as he did in MK1. Still, he's absolutely hilarious, and obviously enjoys being a villain even more than being a hero - and, more importantly, he's at heart still the same Flay: fun-loving, mischievous, gloriously dramatic and utterly devoid of common sense. He just has a -lot more toys- to play with, and those trinkets include the entire student and teacher body of Al-Revis: after all, he needs to increase his armed forces somehow. Elfboy can rest easy regarding the Flayvor of Evil - he's just as fun as he was before.
Tony - Now, Tony I wish they did more with. Like with Flay, you can still recognize Tony from a mile away, and the game nods to MK1 about as carefully as it did with Flay: the scythe on the room, the dialogue with Zeppel lightly nodding to Renee (who else would marry him? Granted, he probably has reason to worry about her cheating if he -hasn't been home for three years-), the fact that he still tries too goddamned hard to be evil and just ends up being sorta endearing in that retarded puppy way - even moreso now that you notice that he's turned into a total and complete softy (the rivalry between him and Flay turning into a friendly, if sorta twisted deal was cool, but I honestly wish that more than two scenes nodded to that). He's also gotten blunter with the years, and this bluntness makes for some funny interaction between him and Ulrika - and it's honestly shocking to see that he's actually halfway competent as a teacher (especially in comparison to Flay, who just tosses students into the gaping maw of death and waits for them to get back. "Holy, he actually explains stuff!" is an actual line, to give you an idea. Al-Revis has gotten a stunning teacher body with the years), but I also like that. However? He just doesn't have enough of that screentime. I mean, he's decently present throughout the game, but it never feels enough. Which is just a pity, because he's the most interesting NPC and the most endearing. Like Flay, Tony is at least just as cool as he was in MK1, but unlike Flay, it feels the screentime he gets doesn't do him justice. It kinda saddens me, but what he does get is pretty fun. Also, the tie is fucking pimp.
Reicher - Reicher is odd, much like the antagonist cast in general for MK2. He's sorta charismatic and generally non-chalant, very strangely friendly and somewhat unsettling exactly because he's such an affable little fellow. You can see he'll be an antagonist from miles away, but he... generally doesn't act like one. Which is quite unusual for a character whose motivation is the ur-trope for your typical shounen villain (I WANT TO FIGHT STRONG PEOPLE I WANT TO BE DEFEATED). I think that what makes him so unusual is that both the game treats his motivation as decidedly unbalanced (he even admits that his brain screws don't really work right) and his general personality doesn't fit the motivation well - which does point to the whole execution being deliberate. And the way he reacts when he finally is defeated is actually honestly refreshing. The manner in which Raze decides to deal with him is also refreshingly hands-off and practical. Reicher's insanely off-character out of context Luca Blight outburst also makes sense once you glue the pieces of the plot splits together. For some reason, he ends up being bigger than the sum of his parts, and I find hard to dislike him just for how he manages to twist such a tired trope so heavily without deconstructing it. The fact that he's in a game where nothing can be taken seriously also helps, because he doesn't take himself very seriously either. One of the reasons I wish MK2 had a strong writing backbone.
Sasalina - Sasalina's sort of a sad case: she's a wasted character due to the role she was ultimately meant to play, but she fulfills her ultimate role in the cogs very effectively, which leads to a strange result. The sluttily-dressed, lovelorn henchlady of the antagonist is something that can go to very obvious places. But the interactions she has before her (actually non-obvious) place in the plot kicks in are just endearing. The verbal back-and-forth she engages in with Reicher is entertaining, and I so very wish they played this up more. Her first encounter with Ulrika's party (yes, the antagonist's presence lies almost entirely in one route while the henchwoman's presence lies within the other) is also funny, and Sasalina's at her best at that point. But after that, when she starts being affected by the game's Hidden Ultrapower In A Can, Sasalina starts losing her personality as she gets consumed emotionally by it, and the game shows that in a manner that's rather visceral, particularly for MK2's setting. It's both sad and disturbing to see the chipper villain girl slowly turn into an obsessed, nearly incapable of basic communication human shell, and then ultimately disappearing from the plot once she is deemed too deeply affected to keep trying. Given how she reappears in Raze path's ending as chipper and healthy as she usually is, it's safe to assume she recovered, at least (although you wouldn't know who the hell she is if you played his story first). <_< As a plot device, she ends up very, very effective, and that's cool. However, I liked the character that existed before the plot device and honestly wish it got more time to shine. Oh well.
Tetri - The most boring member of the antagonist cast due to no fault of her own. Tetri obviously means no harm at all and is actually a pretty nice person. However, she is mainly obeying orders, and she will take matters in her hands if it needs be. She would honestly be more at home in a game where metaphysics didn't follow Looney Tunes logic, and outside of being as friendly and willing to compromise as a person in a mission could ever be, she doesn't offer much outside of a rather badass boss battle and liking cute things - and she doesn't get a lot of screentime either, for all that this makes sense. Not much to say here, although the glaring, almost cartoonish contrast between her and Ulrika can be entertaining - it's almost sad to see Tetri so willing to explain everything while Ulrika plugs her ears and goes "LALALA NOT LISTENING", and the communicational struggle that stems from the personality clash.
Dark Mana - Also not much to say. Typical foil to the Light Mana, only he's senile to the point of cartoonishness. Sorta boring, and works more as a plot device to start Ulrika's troubles than anything else.
Light Mana - Okay, so the Light Mana is a complete dick. And an unerring pussy. Yes, he manages to be both. The whole game starts due to a bet between the two Manas, but the Light Mana was a dick. Oh, and the reason he is a dick? Because a human kicked his ass once. Basically, he has all the makings of a completely worthless character. However, this turns into gold when the game gives you the chance to meet him in person. You see, the reasoning for the party to reach the Mana? Simply the urge to go punch the goddamn loser in the face for starting the insanity to begin with. And when the party -does- meet him, the fact they mock the hell out of him in such a genre-savvy way is downright hilarious. The characters treat him in such a hands-off approach, like they were talking to the grocery cashier while shopping downtown (including the parts where they start talking to people they know in the grocery and entirely forget the cashier exists), and it pisses him so much he starts foaming at the mouth. Then, a bunch of teenagers beat him up and they borderline forget he exists as he melts down in the most epic nerdrage bout a godlike being could engage. This was quite possibly the best scene in the entirety of the game, and one of the most memorable final boss scenes I've ever seen, if nothing else because of how mercilessly it deconstructs the final confrontation cliches for the sake of laughs. It's downright brilliant, and something I've been hoping to be done for years in a game. Simply hilarious, and definitely makes the game worth playing twice if you already like the gameplay. One of the worst characters to exist serving one of the best purposes ever, in the end of the day, the Light Mana ends up functioning like a brand new cog in the engine. Just excellent.
I probably should have compiled all these incoherent rants into a single world-ending wall of text to haunt you all with, but eh.
EDIT: I wish I could say "Tally-chu possessed me" as an excuse for this gargantuan thought regurgitation, but if Tally-chu possessed me, I would be playing Atelier Iris instead of posting country-wide rants on this topic.
