Skies of Arcadia characters
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This article covers the fictional characters from the Sega Dreamcast video game Skies of Arcadia.
See also Skies of Arcadia things and events.
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Player characters
The game's three main player characters are Vyse, Aika, and Fina. The secondary three player characters are Drachma, Gilder and Enrique.
Vyse
Vyse is the viewpoint character of the game. Vyse (pronounced "vice" in English or "bai-su" in Japanese) is somewhat short for his 17 years of age. He has brown hair and brown eyes, and a scar on his left cheek. He wears a blue jacket over a black sleeveless t-shirt, black pants, brown knee-length leather boots and a black "eyepatch"-shaped lens over his right eye which he can use to magnify distant objects. Not very much is known about Vyse's youth, except that as soon as he was able to, he became a regular sailor on his father's pirate airship, the Albatross. Vyse had to overcome airsickness when he was a child, but it no longer bothers him. He obtained the distinctive crescent-shaped scar under his left eye during a failed rescue attempt when he was ten years old.
Vyse is extremely driven to do well and be a role model to those around him. His strong compassion and empathy are known to inspire others to great feats that they did not realize they were capable of. With nothing more than his goodwill and personality, Vyse unites a disparate crew from all over the world into a single fighting force to do battle with the Valuan Armada, and he can call on his crew members when the need is great to fight the enemy by shouting, "Blue Rogues, attack!" Vyse is a notable character in modern RPGs because his personality and character design visibly eschew the brooding, monochromatic and depressive characterization embraced by Squaresoft (now Square Enix) in the PlayStation iterations of the Final Fantasy series.
Vyse is an expert swordsman who fights with twinned cutlasses. He can focus his spiritual energy through his weapons to perform high-powered attacks beyond the ability of normal fighters:
- Cutlass Dance (called Cutlass Fury in the American version of the game).
- Counterstrike
- Air Slash (called Rain of Swords in the American version)
- Skull Shield
- Jolly Roger (called Pirates' Wrath in the American version)
Vyse and Aika are sufficiently confident in their fighting abilities when fighting together that they consider five against two to be unfair odds to their opponents.
Because of his strong, optimistic personality and open, friendly demeanor, Vyse is a natural magnet for women (and some men). He attracts attention (welcome or otherwise) from many of the female characters of the game, though his true affections lie with his closest friend, Aika, and Fina, their mysterious associate.
Vyse sees the older Captain Drachma as a mentor figure during the early part of his voyage, and in its middle, he meets the freewheeling Captain Gilder, who shows the younger pirate the lighter side of life in the skies of Arcadia. Vyse and Gilder break out of a Valuan prison together and rescue Aika and Fina, then enlist the aid of Prince Enrique to escape from the country. Enrique then accepts Vyse as the captain of his ship, the Delphinus, to continue their mission to recover and secure the six Moon Crystals.
In the Japanese language sound bites, Vyse is voiced by Seki Tomokazu. In the English language sound bites, Vyse is voiced by Christopher Sullivan.
Aika
Aika is one of the protagonists of the game. Aika (pronounced "ai-ka" in Japanese and virtually the same in English) is a brown-eyed redhead who wears her hair in two long, stiff braids. During the brief periods when she takes her hair down, it is soft and straight. Aika's clothes are a pair of goggles which she wears perched on top of her head, a brief yellow dress, dark shorts (which bear a passing resemblance to Japanese school bloomers) and a pair of leather boots similar to Vyse's. Overall, she kind of resembles a teenage Pippi Longstocking dressed as Final Fantasy VIII's Selphie Tilmitt. Unfortunately, her physical beauty has attracted unwanted advances from Admiral Vigoro of the Valuan Armada. Aika is 17 years old, the same age as Vyse and Fina.
Aika's childhood alternated between happiness and tragedy. Her parents were killed when she was a small girl, and for a time she was kept by the Dyne family as a foster daughter until she was old enough to take care of herself, when she moved back into her family's old home. When she was a very young girl, Aika fell into the well on Pirate Island and was rescued by Vyse; as a result of the trauma of this fall she has never learned to swim. When she was ten years old, she got into serious danger while helping out with a rescue mission, and this situation resulted in the crescent-shaped scar under Vyse's left eye.
Aika's fighting style is aggressive, using her boomerangs in long arcing curves against single opponents. Her magic is very strong, though not quite as strong as Fina's, and she has an especial affinity for spells of the Red Moon, which she learns more quickly than others. Noticeably, all of Aika's S-moves are named after letters of the Greek alphabet. Her S-Moves involve wide attacks against groups of foes, especially powerful against weaker enemies. They are Alpha Storm, Delta Shield, Lambda Burst, Epsilon Mirror and Omega Psyclone.
Aika has been friends with Vyse for her entire life and the two fight extremely well together. Additionally, she becomes fast friends with Fina. Aika has problems with authority figures (including Captain Dyne), but comes into her own when she, Vyse and Fina strike out on their mission.
In what little yuri dojinshi and fanfiction exists, Aika is invariably paired with Fina.
In the Japanese language sound bites, Aika is played by Tomoko Kawakami. In the English language sound bites, Aika is played by Victoria McCreary.
Fina
Fina is an extremely beautiful girl in her late adolescence (17 years old), with a curvy figure, pale skin, green eyes and blonde hair. She wears an ankle-length sleeveless white dress slit up each side to nearly halfway up the thigh for mobility, white tights and boots with gold cuffs, sleeves which stay at mid-arm despite no visible means of support, and a gold headband from which depends a gauzy whitish-yellow veil that covers her collar-length hair. There is a triangular cutout in her dress at the top of her breasts. Fina has arcane markings on her forehead and shoulders, of unknown origin and purpose; there are no similar markings on Ramirez's face or body.
Fina had a profoundly lonely childhood. The only humans in the Great Silver Shrine other than her were Ramirez and the Elders, the latter of whom were all well over a thousand years old and preserved in crystals. For all of her adolescence and half of her pre-adolescent years, Ramirez was gone on a secret mission for the Elders, so Fina was virtually alone and isolated from human contact in a very sterile environment.
Given the circumstances of her youth, Fina is a surprisingly well-adjusted young woman. The polar opposite of Aika, Fina is demure and introverted, allowing the more extroverted Vyse and Aika to deal with strangers. Once Fina's friendship is won, however, she will go literally to the ends of the earth and beyond for said friend, even when he would be deemed beyond reasonable hope by most. She is very naive about Arcadian customs, as one might expect given her cloistered upbringing, but she is a very quick study, and generally only needs a given concept to be explained to her once before she understands it. However, her education includes some very curious gaps, like pets (such as the doglike Arcadian huskra, Pow) and the use and acquisition of money. Fina quickly picks up Aika's habit of gently teasing her close friends, aided by her quick wits.
Fina appears to be a weak physical fighter, and her floating pet Cupil does her physical attacks for her (both close-range and distance). Her magic strength, however, is the highest of any player character, giving her punishing firepower in her attack spells. Her S-Moves are Lunar Blessing, Lunar Glyph, Lunar Cleansing, Lunar Winds and Lunar Light.
In the game, Vyse and Aika quickly take Fina into their close-knit partnership, hardly skipping a beat. Fina is the quietest member of the trio, and she prefers to be the voice of support rather than a leader. However, she earns the respect and love of everybody around her with her beauty and quiet empathy. Fina's relationship with Vyse and Aika grows very close by the end of the game, which allows the three to act as one. In the very last scene of the game's ending cinema before the credits roll, Fina appears with Vyse and Aika wearing a much skimpier, pirate-themed version of her costume.
In the Japanese language sound bites, Fina is played by Yui Horie. In the English language sound bites, Fina is played by Julissa Aguirre.
Drachma
Captain Drachma is a major player character in the game. Captain Drachma is a grizzled old man with a full beard and mustache, a patch over his right eye and a fisherman's paunch. His right arm was torn off by the arcwhale Rakhnam. He wears black pants and a green shirt, over which goes the strap that holds his mechanical arm onto his body. Drachma has had his mechanical arm for quite some time, and he can use it with a great deal of fluidity, as if it were his natural arm and not a prosthetic.
Drachma's personality late in life is shaped by the tragic loss of his wife and his son. He is a tired, bitter old man, hanging desperately on to his desire to avenge the death of too many people. Exposure to Vyse, Fina and Aika reminded him that there were things to live for other than vengeance. Drachma takes the young heroes under his wing during the early part of the game, unwillingly at first but eventually he becomes a part of their small family, and his loss is keenly felt by Vyse and crew.
Drachma is the strongest physical fighter of all in Skies of Arcadia, able to dish out terrifying damage and absorb punishment that would send any other character looking for a sacri crystal or riselem box. However, his strength comes at a heavy cost; his magic strength is virtually nil. His weapons are a series of hand attachments to his metal arm.
Drachma dies six months after the end of the game. His battles with Rakhnam become the stuff of tavern stories across Arcadia.
In the Japanese language sound bites, Drachma is played by Mugihito. In the English language sound bites, Drachma is played by Joseph Hughes.
Gilder
Captain Gilder is a darkly handsome man of 32 years, who wears a red duster, like other gunslinger anime heroes like Vash the Stampede and Final Fantasy VII's Vincent Valentine. He wears a pair of slim-framed pince-nez which he doesn't actually appear to need for anything but looks. Gilder is a freewheeling, free-love type of pirate with a woman in every port. He lives to have fun, and flying about the skies, shooting up Valuans and liberating their treasure is a lot of fun.
Gilder fights both at close and long range with his pistols. His fighting strength is quite high, and he has three of the better S-Moves in the game: Gunslinger, Aura of Denial and The Claudia. The last is called I am Gilder! (Ore ga Girudaa da!) in Japanese.
Gilder has had many flings, but no true love. He treats Vyse as a younger brother, and vocally envies the younger pirate's ability to travel Arcadia with two of its most beautiful women. Gilder has a love-love relationship with Clara, in that she loves him and he loves to keep away from her. Gilder's philosophy on love is described by his motto: "Women are like sunsets; they are beautiful, but there will be a different one tomorrow." After the Battle of Soltis, Gilder goes back to his sky-sailing, hedonistic ways. His true love is the Claudia.
In the Japanese language sound bites, Gilder is played by Norio Wakamoto. In the English language sound bites, Gilder is played by Jay Styne.
Enrique
Enrique is rather bishounen, short in height (shorter than Aika, the second shortest major character in the game) and slightly-built. His blonde hair is neatly fringed in front and sleekly well-groomed in back. He has wide, bright green eyes, which contribute significantly to his "bishie" appearance. He wears dark violet clothing, and a breastplate. Enrique wields a rapier in combat.
In his childhood, Enrique was looked after by servants and saw his uncle, Second Admiral Gregorio, far more often than his mother, the Empress. As a young adult, he and Admiral Galcian conflict in their interests, to the point that Enrique eventually takes up arms against his homeland to fight against him.
Enrique has a strongly and deeply-entrenched moral sense, something that puts him at odds with the indolent Valuan nobility. He is a charismatic speaker, the force of his heart filling his words with sincerity that might not otherwise be believed coming from a Valuan noble. He chose willingly the path of an outcast and Air Pirate because he believed that his path was the only way to shock Valua out of her complacency.
Enrique fights his enemies with his rapier, precisely attacking through weak points rather than with Vyse's powerful cutlass techniques. Not being a main character, he has only three S-Moves, Royal Blade, Justice Shield and The Judgment.
Enrique is romantically involved with the Yafutoman Princess Moegi, the younger sister of the unmarried Crown Prince (King shortly after the end of the game) Daigo; Enrique and Moegi marry at the end of the game, making Enrique's potential first child both heir apparent to the Valuan Throne and heir presumptive to the Yafutoman Throne.
Enrique's closest friends are his fellow crew members of the Delphinus crew; Vyse, Aika and Fina.
In the Japanese language sound bites, Enrique is played by Soichiro Hoshi.
Valuan Empire
The game's main antagonists are affiliated with the Valuan Empire. Valua's foreign policy is hostile, expansionist and imperialist, and its domestic policy is best summed up in the words of Marie Antoinette: "Let them eat cake!" The Valuan Armada is the strongest military in the world of Skies of Arcadia, followed closely by the Nasrean Navy.
In terms of the real world, Valua represents the worst aspects of the four greatest imperial powers of Western history: The aggression and bloodlust of Imperial Rome, the indolent nobility of the Spanish Empire, the venal self-assurance of the British Empire and the world-striding arrogance of the American Empire.
Belleza
Belleza is an attractive woman in her early 30s, astonishingly young for her position as the fourth highest ranked officer in the Imperial Valuan Armada. She is the commander of the Imperial Intelligence and Special Operations Command. She has auburn hair that falls between her shoulder blades, narrow green eyes and wide lips. She wears a uniform consisting of a fitted, ribbed top of dark pink, red leather sleeves with wide shoulders, a wide belt (or a narrow corset), black pants with an exaggerated flare at the hips, and red boots.
In disguise as "Bellena," a Nasrean dancing girl, Belleza wears gauzy, billowy violet pants and a top that's not so much a top as an opaque violet sash looped around her neck, over her chest and tied behind her back.
Belleza hates warfare and unnecessary bloodshed, but believes that the best way to end such evils is for the entire world to be united under one rule. Unfortunately, the government she serves is the oppressive Valuan Empire, and this leads to a conflict between her sense of duty and her sense of justice.
Belleza has an unrequieted love for Galcian, but claims to have no present lovers. Unfortunately, since she says this as part of a ploy to gain the sympathy of the PCs, how much of it is true is open for debate. She finds the younger Vyse physically attractive, but by the end of the game comes to understand that his heart belongs with Aika and Fina.
Belleza directly opposes Vyse, Aika and Fina early in the game, where she uses them to get her hands on the Red Moon Crystal, but after she and the Lynx are defeated, she mostly opposes them by scheming against them.
During the Battle of Soltis, Belleza rams the Lynx into the escape module of Galcian's flagship, the Sky Fortress Hydra, killing both her and Galcian.
Galcian
Galcian is the primary antagonist of the game, who repeatedly uses his subordinates to amass his own personal power and battle the heroes. Galcian's flagship is the Serpent.
Galcian is a strong and fit man in his late 40s. His hair is iron-grey and his eyes are dark and hooded. He wears a black cloak over his fighting clothes, which consist of a black shirt, some light armor over his chest, a broad leather belt and close-fitting pants. His sword is a truly gigantic weapon, nearly five feet long from hilt to tip, with a triangular blade nearly a foot wide at its base.
Galcian's loyalty is only to himself. He will do anything, and betray anyone, to increase his own power. He believes that only power rules, and that the weak (which is to say everybody but him) are fit only to serve the powerful. His motivations and desires revolve primarily around power, and because of this he is a slightly shallow character, though an intelligent, manipulative, aggressive and dangerous villain.
Galcian commands the absolute loyalty of the troops and sailors under his command, though not necessarily so of his fellow admirals. In particular, Gregorio neither likes nor trusts the younger Lord Admiral. Galcian is aware of - and manipulates - Belleza's attraction to him, but does not return her feelings. He has a strong relationship with his former Vice-Captain, Ramirez. Galcian has a strongly adversarial relationship with Vyse and his crew, although they seldom cross swords during the game's events.
During the Valua-Nasr War, Galcian was an ambitious officer who rose to the rank of First Admiral by his late 30s. He advanced to Lord Admiral after the death of former Lord Admiral Mendosa, about ten years prior to the start of the game. Lord Galcian plans to rule all of Arcadia himself, rather than by manipulating the over-aggressive and unstable Empress Teodora I. To this end, he raises the lost continent of Soltis and uses the legendary Rains of Destruction to destroy Valua. During the Battle of Soltis, Galcian is confronted and defeated by Vyse and his friends; and then killed by Belleza.
In the Japanese language sound bites, Galcian is played by Kinryuu Akimoto. In the English language sound bites, Galcian is played by Dennis Lancaster.
Gregorio
Gregorio is the Second Admiral of the Valuan Armada, second nominally to both Alfonso and Galcian, but in reality only obeying Galcian. He is the brother-in-law of Empress Teodora, ruler of the Valuan Empire, and the uncle of Enrique. His flagship is the Auriga. He is honorable to the extreme and does not like Galcian or the current expansionist orders much, although he obeys them. He is at least in his early to late sixties. He is known as the Stone Wall Admiral for his superb defensive tactics and capabilities.
The player first sees Gregorio in a cut scene of a meeting of the Admirals. Later, his fleet of ships is fought after leaving Esperanza for the first time. This series of battles ends after a battle with the Auriga, although Gregorio survives. However, after deciding that his honor would be better served helping his nephew and his friends, Vyse, Aika and Fina, he sacrifices his life to save them, delaying Galcian as they escape from Dangral Island.
Ramirez
Ramirez is the youngest and lowest-ranked admiral of the Valuan Armada. He has a strongly bishounen appearance with pale skin, green eyes and medium-long silver hair, although his age is 27 years old (one of the few characters other than the three primary characters in Skies of Arcadia to have a concrete age). Ramirez's flagship is Her Imperial Valuan Majesty's Ship Monoceros.
Ramirez is one of only two children of the Silvites, the other being Fina, 10 years younger. A decade ago he was sent to Arcadia to scout the world for the Moon Crystals, in preparation for the Elders to send the Rains of Destruction to wipe out Arcadian civilization once more, fearing as they did the Valuan Empire. During the interim, Ramirez lost contact with his superiors and became part of the Valuan military, becoming the aide of first Lord Admiral Mendosa and then his successor, Galcian.
Ramirez is an extreme follower, whose morality revolves solely around the dictates of others. While this may have been desirable to the Elders while he was on the Great Silver Shrine, it resulted in his loss on Arcadia, and the stronger-willed Fina was sent to complete his mission (though she was not briefed on the true goals of the mission). In particular, Ramirez develops a near-religious obsession with the desires and goals of Lord Admiral Galcian, and follows the older man to his death at the Battle of Soltis.
In weaponry, combat style and tactics, Ramirez is a dark mirror of Vyse. He wields a sword and uses attacks which for the most part are synthesized analogues of those of Vyse and Fina, and he is very adept at Silver Magic. Ramirez's S-Moves are Silver Eclipse, Silver Tundra and Lunar Blessing.
Deloco
Probably the shortest character in the game, it's safe to say that the Admiral of the Fifth Fleet is insane, or at least almost insane. A good example of this is the fact he tries to hunt down and kill Vyse for damaging his ship, the Chameleon. Judging from his appearance it's clear that he has problems with his body, for he wears apperatus on his front and back that seem to help him breath. His head is also encased in a glass bubble, and he is always wearing a pair of wrap around goggles, concealing his eyes. Also, whenever he gets angry, his suit beeps warningly before he collapses. despite this however he is a tecnilogical genius, creating such weapons as the Delphinus's Moonstone Cannon.
Deloco is first seen, like the other Admirals, in a cut scene near the beginning of the game. Later he is defeated by Vyse and Co. when he tries to burn the forests of Ixa'taka to the ground to find the lost city of Rixis. He defeated a total of five times during the game, before finally being blown to peices with his ship by the Delphinus in Deep Sky
Other characters
Clara
Clara is called "Krone" in the Japanese version of the game, a reference to the Dutch "krone" coin and continuing the "money" theme of secondary character names shared by Gilder (guilder), Drachma, Rupee and Piastol (piastre). She is a slightly mad Blue Rogue who is obsessed with Gilder. Believing him to be her true love, Clara chases Gilder across Arcadia in her modified pirate ship, the Primrose. According to Gilder, Clara is "scarier than the [Valuan Empire's] Armada." Her ship is painted in vivid shades of pink, red and yellow, earning her the fan monicker "Clara the Pink Rogue" and her crew consists entirely of adolescent girls and young women. After the end of Skies of Arcadia, Clara continues to sail the skies in pursuit of Gilder.
Vigoro
One of the admirals of the Valuan Armada, he is quite the lady's man, at least to some people. Aika has a few run ins with him, and he tries as hard as he can to win the love of "Red", his nickname for her, but always fails. He later quits being apart of the Valuan Armada, and becomes an Air Pirate in the director's cut version of Skies of Arcadia, called Skies of Arcadia: Legends for the Gamecube console.