Behind the scenes of Arle’s Adventure & Pocket Puyo Puyo~nOriginal Blog Post User ID: inaken [As
Behind the scenes of Arle’s Adventure & Pocket Puyo Puyo~nOriginal Blog Post User ID: inaken [Assumed to be the credited writer of Arle’s Adventure, Ken’ichi Ina]Date: 07/02/10(Art courtesy of Nenilein, the translator of this blog post)(The post starts with a PreCure 5 crackfic drabble, which we’re including in the name of the recent Puyo Quest crossover.)Urara: No, Nozomi-senpai! Don’t put on that mask!Nozomi: Urara-chan! I reject my humanity! Starting today, I shall be a superior Uzaina!*Le Gasp*Nozomi: UZAINAaaaaaaaaaaah!!Urara: Nozomi-senpaiiiiiiii!!Rin: …Who wrote the script for this episode?• Let’s talk about the past.While I was going through my room, I found the Game Boy game Arle’s Adventure. I wrote the scenario for that game, but I hadn’t touched it in a long time. Tonight, I finally played it again. The game was really nostalgic, but I didn’t remember a lot of it and ended up having to use a walkthrough I found on the internet to finish it. Some developer I am, right? The wave of nostalgia brought a lot of random memories to the surface. Since it’s been so long, I figure I might as well dump a bunch of the scenarios I came up with while working on the game here, even if it’s unofficial.Not like anyone’s gonna read it, anyway.Please keep in mind that everything that follows is unofficial and not recognized as lore by Compile. • Some (unofficial) backstory for the scenario of Arle’s AdventureThe chronology of the world of Puyo Puyo is essentially a Möbius Strip, like the Ouroboros Snake. Time is closed in a wheel and continues to flow within it. The average inhabitant of this closed world can’t even conceive of concepts like “maturing” or “growing.” In the Madou Monogatari era, Arle went to school, learned magic, and developed her own insight, but nothing of the sort happens like that in the current Puyo Puyo era. That’s because Satan explicitly made the Puyo Puyo world that way. However, some took issue with this new world order. Among them were the Seven of the Village of Spirits. We only briefly covered Septem’s true identity when discussing the game’s early concepts in the Compile Club magazine, but basically they used to be a part of a djinni who could convert the wishes of people into power. This djinni went by the name “Septem Dies”. It was sealed and divided in two by the Hero,, with Septem being the Djinni’s amnesiac heart. This is why the “Dies” who appears in the game lacks a mind of its own. It is a heartless entity made of pure power. The Elder had a wish he wanted to realize even if it meant the loss of the current peace. A wish he desired so desperately that he even dared to use the power of Dies, who the Hero had considered dangerous enough to seal away. That wish was to “cut apart the wheel of closed time”. To realize this wish, he decided to raise Septem as a person so that they would come to understand other people’s feelings and needs, and value their emotions. The Elder believed that this would help him reach his goal.It’s obvious if you play the game, but the Elder’s wish never comes true.However, at one point in Arle’s Adventure, Arle says this to Septem: “I can’t just keep playing around forever, you know.”Upon hearing those words, Satan began to consider that somewhere deep inside, Arle was rejecting the stagnant world he had made.By the way, the Spirit People weren’t the only ones who realized that the world was closed off in terms of passage of time. Several others realized the truth as well.Schezo, for instance, who’s always busy stealing magic power from others to “develop” his own capabilities, knew about the closed nature of the world.However, he didn’t think much of it since it didn’t pose any problems to his activities.And now for some really behind the scenes stuff.The spell that Satan used to change the Puyo into cards at the start of the game demands an immense amount of magic power from the caster. The caster’s magic is transferred into the cards and then used to materialize the monsters when the cards are used. The reason why Satan spent most of the game as the “Cloak Guy”, who was giving Arle advice instead of helping her directly, was because he had used up most of his magic casting that spell… Or at least that was what I had in mind when I wrote the scenario.I’m going to go into more detail on this in a bit, but Jovis, or “Mr. Wind”, as he’s also called, is actually the same person as Shou from Puyo Wars. Septem’s birthday, December 16th, is actually a pun on their name: セプテム = SE + PU + TE + MU千 Se(n) = 1000ぷぅ, as in 二つ, Pu(u) = 2Te, similar to the English word “Ten” = 10む, as in 六つ, Mu(tsu) = 6Taking the first digit of each number, we get 1216, so 12/16. We listed Septem’s gender as “unknown”, but the truth is that they don’t have one. The djinni Septem Dies never really thought about their gender, and this carried over to Septem. Though, I believe that Septem will eventually choose a gender as they grow older.When we first came up with the plot, there were plans to give Septem a transformed form like the other characters from their village, and that’s how we came up with “Septem Dies” as their true form. Septem and Dies having similar horns in-game is a leftover of that concept.The names of Septem and the other Spirit People came from the Latin words for the days of the week:Septem Dies = Seven Days = A WeekDies Lunae = MondayDies Martis = TuesdayDies Mercurii = WednesdayDies Jovis = ThursdayDies Veneris = FridayDies Saturni = SaturdayDies Solis = SundayThe phrases Dies says upon transforming and the names of the monsters it summons are also Latin:Limus = Spirit (TL Note: It doesn’t actually mean that, but this is how it is used in the game)Ventus = WindIgnis = FireGlacies = IceEvolutio = Evolution (TL Note: This last spell isn’t used by Dies, but by the named characters from the village the game is set in.)This game was meant to cover the events of “The Day the Puyo Disappeared” in the Shin (True) Madou Monogatari timeline. In my initial proposal, the Puyo weren’t turned into cards at the start of the game, but instead sent into another world. The “Puyo Ether”, “Puyo Crystals”, and “Monster Cards” were things that materialized from Satan’s power, which was consumed by the spell mentioned earlier. Arle’s wish at the end of the game brought the Puyo back into the Madou world.• The (unofficial) backstory of Pocket Puyo Puyo~n’s scenario The plot for this game was derived from the scenarios for the console versions, but I was really only responsible for the Pocket version. So, I really can’t tell you here what the box Satan opened in the opening movie was all about (I had nothing to do with the console versions).After the world collapsed due to the Great Sorcery War, Satan found Arle at the edge of the dimension. However, he didn’t realize that Arle had previously gotten stuck in the margin between dimensions, which tore her in two (leaving her weaker than Lilith in the Puyo Puyo era). Unaware of this fact, Satan brought only one part of Arle with him into the Puyo Puyo world he had created. The other, neglected Arle eventually drifted to the edge of the Puyo Puyo world, but she found herself unable to enter, and could only observe from the outside.This other Arle is the girl known as “Doppelganger Arle” in Puyo Puyo~n.Time marched on, and Satan finally noticed the other Arle that existed beyond the borders of his world (we’ll call her Doppel now). However, due to a law of the worlds that states that only one instance of any one person can exist in any given world, he couldn’t invite Doppel, who was technically the same person as Arle, into his world. (To explain this law in simple terms, please imagine the multiverse as a computer file system. If you already have a file named “Arle.prsn” in a folder, you can’t save a second file called “Arle.prsn” to that same folder. Or you can, but you’ll overwrite the old file.)Satan tried to think of a way to help the other Arle enter the world, and created the “Pierrot” costume, which limits Arle’s magical output and prevents the world itself from recognizing Doppel as the Arle we already know. Pierrot (aka Doppel) is unable to use her skills in the first battle of the game because her magic was sealed by the Pierrot costume.Doppel has only one wish: She wants to leave the cold, empty loneliness of the borders behind, and live in the world she could only ever watch from outside. Naturally, the existing Arle presents an obstacle. In order to grant her wish, Doppel seeks to live as the one and only Arle by exiling her other half outside of the Puyo Puyo world.Even though Satan couldn’t endorse her wish, he wanted to help her. Thus, Satan planned to let Arle meet Doppel face to face. It was a risky plan, but he hoped that the clash of the two Arles would somehow change Doppel’s situation. That is the truth behind Yo~n’s disastrous circus.Regardless of whether Arle is aware that she and Doppel used to be the same person, she ends up telling her this:“Nobody can ever replace someone else.”Though her words may sound harsh, the two Arles have already spent a long time apart. Arle recognized that the Arle standing in front of her was a different person. If the two of them acknowledged each other as separate, then the world would follow suit, which would let Doppel exist in it permanently. It is as Doppel says: “I’ll come see you again someday, Arle. But this time, as no one but…me.”…Or so goes the main conflict between Arle and Doppel, but beyond that, there’s also yet another plan of Satan’s. I’m talking about Satan’s plan to cut apart the wheel of circular time from Arle’s Adventure. Borrowing Carbuncle for a while (meaning, Carby’s kidnapping in the start of the game) and guiding Arle outside the world (the last battle of Yo~n) were part of this plan. This is also why you see Satan run off claiming that it’s “still too early” in the Manzai Demo after the Skeleton-T fight. He was still in the middle of his preparations for his big plan.(TL Note: Satan does not actually appear in a scene with Skeleton-T during the main storyline. There is in fact no after-battle Manzai for Skeleton-T like InaKen claims. He might actually be referring to the Manzai after the Kikimora fight, which does feature Satan.)By this time Satan had decided to cut apart the wheel of circular time and restore its normal linear flow. He planned to do so through the collision of the powers of Carbuncle’s Rubelcrack gem and Ragnus’ Azorcrack gem, and by using the power of the Hero’s wish once more.In the end, he succeeded in cutting time loose of the wheel. However, the extreme rift in space-time he opened threw many hundreds of Puyo out of the world. Intending to save the Puyo, Jovis leapt into the rift after them and left the Puyo Puyo world himself. (The sudden leap through dimensions rewrote his memories and as a result he became “Sho” in the other world.)And now for some *really, really* unrecognized backstory and some development talk.Originally, I wanted there to be a hidden condition that would come into play when Witch shows up (I think it was clearing the game and using a minimum number of Continues). If triggered, Dark Witch would show up instead of Witch, and hint at Doppel and Arle’s close connection… I wanted to put that scene in in order to clarify some things I couldn’t bring up directly in the game. However, I eventually decided that the scene would have been too serious and cut it before even submitting the script proposal. I was sure that the other staff members at Compile would just tell me that the scene was much too serious for something that was supposed to be a Manzai Demo. They’d criticize it for not being fun to watch, and insist that I go back to the comical style of SUN.The original plan was for the game to have loads and loads of characters, and we drew up tons of cut-in images for all of them. How many characters, exactly? Try the entire cast of Tsu + the entire cast of SUN + Doppelganger Schezo + Dark Witch + Black Kikimora + Veneris & Saturni. Together with the characters in Yo~n’s story mode, it would have been over 40 characters, a massive deluxe cast. Having so many different characters available in Versus Mode would have been great fanservice, and I still regret that we didn’t end up going through with it to this day.• The (entirely unofficial) Puyo Puyo Chaos from Puyo Puyo Box Unlike the stuff about the two games I wrote above, what follows now is entirely my personal headcanons that I’ve never told anybody about. The Puyo Chaos Mode doesn’t even actually have a plot attached to it.(TL Note: The “Puyo Chaos Mode” (ごちゃまぜぷよぷよ) is the game’s Arcade Mode, which, unlike the Arcade Modes in 1, Tsu, SUN, Yo~n and Fever, doesn’t have Manzai Demos.)With the wheel of circular time broken apart, the world was now under assault by a mess of timeline irregularities. So, in this scenario, characters from different points in time appeared and existed alongside each other at random. Naturally, Satan found this situation unstable and dangerous, and he decided to take action. Thus, he held a great tournament that combined all of the previous Puyo competitions held, the “Puyo Puyo Chaos Tournament”, in order to gather all the randomly appearing characters from all across the combined timeline in his tower. Every opponent that lost a battle would be systematically sent back to their original place in time, thus fulfilling the tournament’s true purpose. Beast Draco: A mysterious being that randomly got tied up in the Chaos. “Draco” is simultaneously the name of a character and of the general species, so there are actually many Dracos in the world. This Draco is a girl who grew up far away from human settlements and consequently behaves much like a wild beast. She can only speak in simple, fragmented sentences, such as “You, good guy”, or “Me, give meat”. She is a fundamentally free spirit. My idea was to present her as an alternate Draco that shows what our Draco would be like if her head weren’t full of beauty pageants and Puyo Battles. (TL Note: Beast Draco’s speech in Japanese is written entirely in Katakana.)Alright, since I just wrote everything down as it came to me, I think there’s some points where things differ from what I actually came up with back then, but the general gist is more or less the same.After Yo~n, the flow of time in the world is corrected, and Arle resumes her work on maturing and growing stronger. If I had had another chance to write a scenario for a game set in the world of Madou, I would have loved to write about Arle aspiring to improve herself, and maybe even having another conversation with Doppel, who at this point would have become part of the world as her own person. But since that chance never came, I just kept all these ideas locked away in the back of my head until today.(The rest of the post is a “Maria-sama ga Miteru” crackfic drabble.) -- source link
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