Blue Dragon

An RPG for the Xbox 360, developed by several of the people behind the Final Fantasy series and the artwork of the Dragon Quest series.

Shu, Jiro and Kluke live in a remote village that, once a year, is attacked by a mechanical creature known as the Land Shark. One year, in an attempt to fight it off, they are carried off by it to the flying fortress of the ancient Nene, where they are trounced and a mysterious voice grants them Living Shadows with the ability to use magic.

Stealing (and crash-landing) an airship, they set off to get home and find a way to take down Nene for good...

A sequel/spin-off was produced for the Nintendo DS called Blue Dragon Plus, which is a strategy RPG in which nearly all of the supporting cast from the first game also gain Shadow magic powers and join the main party. A final third Action-RPG DS game, Awakening Shadow, starring another customizable hero(ine), was released worldwide. The protagonist along with Shu and friends go on a quest to regain the shadow magic which has been stolen from the world, finding on their way a mean to reunify the earth. Its single player mode suffered, to say the least, from a focus on multiplayer and an overall lack of polish; although it is a nice alternative to Tales Of Tempest. An Aborted Arc has The Hub littered with inter-dimensional doors leading to a dozen of impossible-on-single-player Bonus Boss es, with some hidden dungeons that could benefit the game's short main quest had they been included.

There was also an anime adaptation with a new girl, Bouquet, whose superpowers were powered by being naked was added to the cast. The dub went through some pretty heavy editing in places. Season one is available uncut on Hulu.

Includes examples of:
 * Accidental Marriage: Marumaro wearing exactly one hat in Kelaso Village.
 * Action Commands: The charge meter, where holding down the A button will fill up the bar - although sometimes they're erratic (Kluke), sometimes slow (Marumaro), sometimes fast (Zola), sometimes steady (Jiro). This can also place the spell cast after another character's or enemy's turn, because there are lines on the charge meter that show a character's turn.
 * The filling speed is actually determined by the type of spell. For example, the Shadow spell under Black Magic is erratic, but Flare under the same is steady.
 * Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Toripo's Hearts, which double in cost each time you buy one. Somewhat justified, in that Toripo physically carries his entire stock with him.
 * Always Check Behind the Chair: Not only do some objects contain items you can take, but many more hold "Nothing," which is apparently not the same as actually having nothing inside. Finding enough Nothing will let you get items from a certain NPC. The “Six Treasures” Downloadable Content includes a pair of glasses that places markers on top of things that are hiding Nothing.
 * Animal Tropes
 * Big Badass Bird of Prey: Kluke's Phoenix
 * A Load of Bull: Jiro's Minotaur
 * Instant Awesome, Just Add Dragons: Shu's Dragon
 * Panthera Awesome: Maro's Saber-toothed Tiger
 * Bat Out of Hell: Zola's Killer Bat
 * The Anime of the Game: The characters' appearances are the same, if not much else... There is also a manga spinoff, which is so different from the source material (mainly thanks to being drawn by the Death Note guy) that the only real connections the two have is that the characters have living shadows, and the monsters eat each other (a gameplay gimmick).
 * Attack Its Weak Point: The first enemy of the game.
 * Bare Your Midriff: Very noticeable with Zola.
 * Becoming the Mask:
 * Be Yourself. It's how you get your Shadows back.
 * Big Bad: Nene. At least, up until the end of the game; then it's.
 * Bigger Bad:
 * Bonus Boss: Tons of 'em, even if you ignore the downloadable content mentioned below.
 * Bonus Dungeon: Tons of 'em, even if you ignore the downloadable content mentioned below.
 * Bowdlerization: Done horribly in the US version of the anime, regarding Bouquet. Remember girls: If you're under eighteen and your breasts are too big, you aren't allowed to have them!
 * Broken Record: To play the Blue Dragon Drinking Game, take a shot every time Shu says "I won't give up!" Even if you only do it when he repeats the phrase twice in a row, you'll be drunk inside an hour.
 * Canon Foreigner: Bouquet the ditzy barmaid from the anime. Surprisingly did not make an appearance in Blue Dragon Plus, even though anything that breathed from the first game was part of the party. Hell, a couple of things that didn't breathe in the original game joined the party.
 * Capital City: Jibral
 * Censor Box : Bouquet's blue "dressing" in the anime dub. Audiences are not pleased.
 * Charge Meter: used for magic, and the Monk job class can use this for normal attacks too.
 * Chickification: Kluke was made into a useless damsel in distress for the anime, not being able to use her shadow until the very last episodes.
 * This is inaccurate. Kluke definitely went through Chickification, but she gained her own shadow and starting using it as of episode 14 in the anime. That's far from the 'very last episodes'.
 * The Chosen Many: The depiction of Shadow users in Blue Dragon Plus.
 * Cognizant Limbs: The Hydrattler.
 * Determinator: Shu's utter refusal to give up under any circumstances isn't just a plot concern. For a significant portion of the game, he cannot flee from battles.
 * Disc One Final Boss
 * Doomed Hometown: There's barely a town in the whole game that Nene doesn't regularly attack. Your own hometown isn't destroyed, but has been abandoned by the time you get back there.
 * Double Agent:
 * Dream Team: This is the first game that Hironobu Sakaguchi, Nobuo Uematsu, and Akira Toriyama worked on together since they worked on Chrono Trigger back in 1995.
 * Drunk on the Dark Side
 * Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors (but not the typical Fire, Ice, Lightning set - it uses the four classical elements plus Light and Dark)
 * Eternal Engine: Loads of them, and toward the end of the game . The term itself, however, is used in-game to refer to the power sources of the Ancient machinery.
 * Evil Old Folks: Nene. He's an ancient, so naturally. This makes him very weak, and he has an illness, so he starts his Xanatos Gambit and tricks Marumaro.
 * Expansion Pack: Downloadable content adds stuff like new items, a randomised Bonus Dungeon, and a New Game+ mode which actually advises you not to even bother trying it unless your party is at least Level 50.
 * Expy: In the anime, Legolas (No, Not that Legolas) is an expy of Hercule (Mr. Satan). The entire Deevee race, of which Marumaro is a member, are expies of the Moogles from Final Fantasy. They are bat/bear hybrid adorable little creatures with round noses who are obsessed with dancing and live in and around caves.
 * Face Heel Turn: in the anime. In the original game,   and does a Heel Face Turn instead.
 * Featureless Protagonist: The main character in Awakened Shadow. You *do* get to choose gender/hair/etc., but the other characters refer to you with gender neutral pronouns anyway.
 * Fighting Your Friend: Marumaro, the first time you meet him. And much, much later in the game.
 * Five-Man Band
 * The Hero: Shu
 * The Lancer: Zola
 * The Smart Guy: Jiro
 * The Chick: Kluke
 * The Big Guy: Marumaro
 * For the Evulz: Nene acts like this for so much of the game that even if he revealed a completely understandable, heartwrenchingly sympathetic reason for his actions at the final battle, most players wouldn't care and would just proceed to beat him down in the dirt anyway.
 * Gainaxing: Zola in the game, though at a low level. Bouquet in the anime, at...not so low a level.
 * Global Airship
 * Global Currency
 * Got the Call on Speed Dial: The entire gang after.
 * Guile Hero: Homeron, a character exclusive to the anime.
 * Heel Face Turn:
 * Heroes Prefer Swords: Shu's default job is Sword Master - since it's a cliche, and this game is an intentional cliche, it had to go in there somehow - the game doesn't have weapons to equip.
 * Heroic Sacrifice: When the party uses the Defense Mecha Robo's barrier device, Nene summons the Servant Mecha Robos. The party proved earlier that they're sentient, unlike the War Mecha Robos Nene was throwing at them for at least an hour, and turn the barrier off so they don't die.
 * Hit Points
 * Hopeless Boss Fight: Really, until you get to the final confrontation with Nene, your encounters with him tend to go like this.
 * Hundred-Percent Completion: Depending on your opinion, anywhere from 5 to 15 of the Achievements are this kind of thing
 * Inexplicable Treasure Chests: If forced to guess, you could say they're left over from the Ancient civilization...and apparently, this group of teenagers are the first people in thousands of years who have thought to open them up and see what's inside.
 * Infinity+1 Sword: Or rather, a bracelet.
 * Interacting with Shadow: Pretty much the entire story.
 * Intrepid Merchant: Toripo, who spends the entire game hunting for Medals. Now, if only he could leave the Hearts to the main characters...
 * Invisible Streaker: Bouquet in the anime. She can become completely invisible, but only she can become invisible.
 * Jiggle Physics: Zola
 * Just Friends: Shu does not fancy Kluke. He reveals this in a cutscene with Jiro suspects them of this, even with an I Want My Beloved to Be Happy moment!
 * Kleptomaniac Hero: And there are even rewards for searching things that don't give you money or items.
 * Last-Disc Magic: Put in a blender with Limit Break and Summon Magic. After you in Disc 3, you get access to powerful "Corporeal" attacks where your Shadow temporarily splits off and becomes solid.
 * Last of His Kind:, at least in the XBOX 360 game.
 * Lethal Lava Land: Primitive Cube
 * Level Grinding: With the Warp Devices, you can go and heal up and level grind from practically anywhere.
 * Living Shadow: The basis of the entire battle systen.
 * Mascot Mook: The poo snakes.
 * Mecha-Mooks: All of Nene's mooks, up to and including his Dragon.
 * Medium Awareness: is Genre Savvy enough to.
 * Metal Slime: Several, but the best example is the Golden Poo Snake.
 * Mr. Fixit: Jiro. Give him an Ancient device, and he'll get it working.
 * Inverted in the Moon Laser Arc, where Marumaro actually gets the desired object to work by banging on it.
 * Ms. Fanservice: Bouquet in the anime, whose invisibility powers only activate when she's nude. This would make her an inversion, except she's drawn more often than not as a blue ghost during these scenes. Either way, cosidering that she's introduced boobs-first in the anime, this still applies.
 * The Mole:
 * Money Spider: Oddly enough, some monster encounters justify this - the money comes out of their poo after you beat them, implying they ate other people with valuables and are literally pooping it out everywhere.
 * Never Bareheaded: Marumaro always wears a hat, which almost results in an Accidental Marriage in Kelaso Village.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
 * No-Gear Level: after the Xanatos Gambit mentioned below, your party begins Disc 3 . Shu eventually manages to recover his through sheer force of will, but you have to beat a boss and work your way through a monster-filled forest before the rest of the party gets back to normal.
 * No Indoor Voice: Marumaro, made specially strange by the fact that literally none of the other Devee talk that way, and made especially annoying by the fact that his voice sounds like someone writing on a chalkboard with a rusty nail.
 * Noob Cave
 * Not-So-Harmless Villain:
 * Parental Abandonment: Averted with Jiro and Marumaro, subverted with Shu (parents killed by the Land Shark, lives with his grandfather) and played straight with Kluke (parents also killed, lives by herself). Zola's are never mentioned, but are probably dead.
 * Preexisting Encounters: you can see and avoid enemies, or even engage two rival groups simultaneously so that they fight each other instead of you and whittle their own numbers down.
 * Ruins for Ruins Sake: Averted with the underground hospital early on, played straight elsewhere.
 * Save Point
 * Sealed Evil in a Can:
 * Sigil Spam: That spiky-circle logo on Ancient stuff turns up everywhere.
 * Smug Snake: Nene, who never loses that infuriating grin.
 * Skill Slot System
 * Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Whenever you beat up Nene, he comes back with better Mecha Robos.
 * Standard Status Effects
 * Sufficiently Advanced Alien: Subverted in that they could preform both magic and science.
 * Three Plus Two: Shu, Jiro and Kluke are the three, Zola and Maro are the two.
 * The Bad Guy Wins: Nene manages to achieve his aim, take away the Shadows, and leave everyone Brought Down to Normal stuck in a village where no-one can leave.
 * The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Primitive Cube, a huge lava-filled... cube, floating.
 * Took a Level In Badass: Quite a lot of the characters. Mostly notably Nene
 * Underwater Ruins: This is an odd example, as they're actually inside a massive cube of water floating above the ocean.
 * Unwitting Pawn: After this revelation, Nene
 * Verbal Tic: Marumaro sometimes ends his sentences with "-maro".
 * Warp Whistle: And a Global Airship? How nice of them.
 * Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds:
 * World Map
 * X Meets Y: Awakened Shadow is basically Persona 3 meets the original Blue Dragon meets the rejected action-RPG concept for Dragon Quest IX.
 * Xanatos Gambit: At the end of Disc 2,, and you've just spent two discs powering them up.
 * You Have 48 Hours: Disc 2,
 * World Map
 * X Meets Y: Awakened Shadow is basically Persona 3 meets the original Blue Dragon meets the rejected action-RPG concept for Dragon Quest IX.
 * Xanatos Gambit: At the end of Disc 2,, and you've just spent two discs powering them up.
 * You Have 48 Hours: Disc 2,
 * You Have 48 Hours: Disc 2,