If you’re looking for music, well
here’s her theme song in various versions. And some extra versions, such as
her current (Japanese) actress, Mie Sonozaki, singing it or
the main menu theme of Puyo Puyo eSports.
Who the hell is Arle? What’s Puyo Puyo? What was that about a “Madou Monogatari”? What the hell can she do?
Arle Nadja is the main character of both of these franchises, former in the latter case. As far as I’m concerned, she’s the Mario/Ryu/Cloud of Puzzle games, specifically Match-3 type, and that’s not an exaggeration. (Okay, it might kinda be an exaggeration).
She is a 16 year old girl who lives in a world of magical creatures, this isn’t that special. Although the magical creatures in this world, like a dragon woman named Draco Centauros, an alaskan pollock with human limbs called Suketoudara, a skeleton obsessed with tea known as Skeleton T, and many more, have more-or-less just as much clout and relevance as the regular people. Arle has been a magician ever since the tender age of 5, passing an extremely dangerous test that makes you ask “why the **** is a 5 year old doing this?”, including seeing her classmates melt and fighting demons. She’s got a kind heart and innocent soul when you haven’t gotten on her nerves, as seen in games where she’s a young girl or has gotten away from the insanity of her world and met new faces, though if you do end up getting on Arle’s nerves she is not afraid to get snarky and critical, especially when she has lost her adorable pet Carbuncle (more below). She’s the sanest member of the original set, and is still one of the most sane characters in the cast.
Her magical talent is spread across a massive variety of spells. She’s a warlock, through and through. A comprehensive list of her magic spells can be found
here, though it’s in Japanese and you’ll need to translate it. Most of it is in katakana, so it is the English word directly written in English. I’ll put some of the more memorable and iconic spells in parenthesis. Magic isn’t all she can do, but it is by far the most prominent of her abilities. She’s this powerful for a reason, but it’s outside the scope of this introductory sheet.
- Fire elemental magic, such as launching Fireballs. (Fireball)
- Ice elemental magic, such as forming storms of ice. (Ice Storm)
- Electricity magic, such as lightning bolts from her hands. (Thunder)
- Magic that makes her own magic even more powerful, though it causes a stutter every time she uses it. (Diacute)
- Light elemental magic, such as beams that have the power of the heavens. (Heaven’s Ray)
- Status ailment inflicting magic, which can cause sleep (Heedon), reduce intelligence (Mind Blast/Brain Dumbed), or more.
- Defensive magic, such as a spell that can reflect enemy attacks (Revia).
- Various other spells, such as Judgement/Jugem, a very powerful magic attack, Warp, which can teleport her, Ruipanko, which can do various things, including making her a powerful protective barrier, Owanimo, which is the catalyst for the Puyo matches, and Healing, which can restore her HP.
- Bayoeen deserves its own section. As by far the most memorable and notable spell in her library, there is nary a game in which she can’t use it. It is, in most Madou games, a paralysis spell that keeps the enemy from moving. In Puyo Puyo, and at least Saturn Madou, it is her most powerful attack, and a maneuver that takes many incarnations.
- A storm of flowers, as seen in every Sega-era Puyo game, like in Madou Monogatari.
- A burst attack emanating from Arle herself. This is how it’s depicted in Puyo Puyo 4, as well as Saturn Madou before the latter becomes a storm of Garbage Puyo.
- A toss up of cosmic objects, which is how it’s depicted in Puyo Puyo SUN.
She has a pet… rabbit… called
Carbuncle, who used to be the pet of
Satan,
lord of hell. Carbuncle has a gem in his head that can fire lasers, and a long tongue that is also prehensile. If Arle and Carbuncle have any three things in common, it’s their magic (seemingly, Carbuncle can do every spell that Arle can in most games he’s playable), their love of curry, and having mixed at best feelings on Satan. If I have to talk about any of the major Puyo cast, it’s gotta be Satan, since he’s (for a very complicated reason that is beyond the scope of this introductory guide) got the hots for Arle, who wants no part of whatever goofy scheme he’s cooked up to win her over. He used to be the main antagonist of the series, though he’s rarely, if ever, a bad guy, and these days is more often helpful than antagonistic.
Arle’s history goes as far back as 1989, 30 years ago, but it’s split across two different game series. Madou Monogatari, the first of these game series, and the parent of the second one, is an RPG that is only connected based on the characters. The gameplay traditionally plays like a dungeon crawler, and the gimmick is that instead of numbers, you have to use Arle’s expression to determine how healthy she is (something that is recurring throughout Puyo, from Madou Monogatari 2 all the way to Puyo Puyo Chronicle, is that characters react to how well they’re doing or if they’re about to die), though later games play like a more traditional JRPG with overworld movement and visible statistics. The primary reason to play them is for the characters, mostly. I said that Arle is the former main character of Madou Monogatari: that series isn’t owned by SEGA, but by Compile Heart, the successor to the original Compile that created both. The series has moved on without its former cast, and created a new one to take its place.
The more famous of the two, and a spinoff of the Madou Monogatari franchise, Puyo Puyo was born in the gaming world in the year 1991. Two slime creatures, in a pair, known as Puyo, fall from the sky. Your task is to make your opponent top out while making sure that you don’t yourself, though there have been several changes to the rules over the years, and all of them are treated as separate modes. Initially, it was little more than a rip-off of Dr. Mario (self admitted by the creator), with two features: Endless, and Mission Mode. But when it got a port to Arcades, it got a story mode and multiplayer: the multiplayer made the series a Japanese sensation, though it wouldn’t do so yet: still, Compile had a working formula on their hands, and all they had to do was perfect it. And, in Puyo Puyo 2 (1994), they did. With new mechanics such as neutralizing incoming garbage, All Clears that gave you more attack power, and quality of life fixes such as double rotation and two piece preview, the series hit the big time with this game, quickly establishing Compile as one of the leaders of the arcade market. To this day, the ruleset of Puyo Puyo 2 is the competitive standard, and it is still common to see Puyo tournaments officially hosted by SEGA (in Japan).
Now is the time to address the not so noble things, such as the lack of unaltered releases and the death of Compile. Back in the 90’s, video games were still seen as a boy’s material in most of the western world, and thus it was feared that Arle could be bad for sales of the game, being a female protagonist. Your first experience with Puyo Puyo, if any, may have very well been Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine (1993), Kirby’s Avalanche/Ghost Trap (1995), or various other versions of the original that did not feature the cast created from Madou Monogatari. And despite being massive, Compile somehow managed to **** it up massively and go bankrupt, not that the series was getting worse (though Puyo Puyo SUN, 1996, and Puyo Puyo 4, 1999, were not as popular as Puyo 2 but rarely considered poor in quality) but they simply made a really bad business decision. To try and save themselves, they sold Puyo Puyo to SEGA in 1998, intending to buy it back when they made enough money, before 2001 when they would lose the rights to make the games entirely. They ended up going bankrupt.
SEGA’s tenure came with massive changes. Firstly, the series ended up in the hands of Sonic Team, the current devs of Puyo Puyo to this day. While the first game they made (Minna de Puyo Puyo, which they didn’t really make, but outsourced to somebody else) was very similar to Compile’s reign, when Puyo Puyo Fever launched in arcades in 2003, something was very different. The art style was more poppish, Arle’s hair color was different, and her friends were gone. She was no longer the star: Amitie took over the spotlight (Arle has since regained it after some time playing footsies with this title from Amitie and Ringo), and there was a whole new cast of faces, some totally new like the chipper, ignorantly murderous ghost girl Yu (later revealed to have a brother named Rei), some spiritual successors such as the gay talking skeleton Oshare Bones, who likes fashion instead of tea. Even the rules now featured individualised character Puyo or attack stats, and a new Fever mode that allowed losing players to mount comebacks. A bold move, SEGA also proved to release Puyo Pop Advance (Minna) and Puyo Pop Fever in the west. This did not work out, since at the time SEGA of America had a massive Sonic boner that they could not subside for Puyo and barely bothered, if they ever did, to advertise it.
Puyo Puyo would see many releases, all of them Japan only, none of them particularly successful but good enough to keep the series doing decently well. Arle’s friends started to come back in 2006’s Puyo Puyo!, or 15th Anniversary as the west calls it, as the series explains this as world hopping. Then Puyo Puyo!! Quest came out on phones in 2013, and it turned the series’ luck around. This is a game that is unlike traditional Puyo Puyo: it’s mostly singleplayer with a good amount of multiplayer, and the way the game is set up is totally different: you pop Puyo by touching them, in order to power up your characters as they go on Quests. The game is also a gacha game, though it never gets to money grubbing extents (in my time), as the game can easily be played F2P to very satisfactory results. To say that it broke the bank would be an understatement: it still retains this title to this day. The series would hit the ****ing jackpot in 2017: Puyo Puyo Tetris, originally released in Japan back in 2014, got a port to Nintendo Switch that came with an English localization, not to mention Sonic Mania featuring it as a boss battle and unlockable game mode. The game did very well for itself despite everything, and to this day seems to be going on with no signs of slowing down (then again, Bottle Episode came out in October of last year).
If you’re curious as to how much Puyo you can get on Nintendo systems, just for the record, the Virtual Boy is the only Nintendo console that lacks a Puyo game of any kind, although there are not enough Nintendo consoles to have one version of every game without overlap (the Wii/DS/3DS has to have at least 2). Madou, by contrast, only had a few Nintendo releases. The series has been going on for 30 years composite, and 28 only counting Puyo. Total sales of Puyo break 25 million, though whether or not this number includes Quest sales I do not know. Either way, it makes it one of the more profitable series and SEGA’s number 2 (Sonic curbstomps everything else they’ve got.)
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I had a write-up planned out for her today, but it was made prior to Joker's reveal. While it's useless as a whole NOW, it's still got some very solid points:
- While nowhere near on the level of, say, Dragon Quest, Puyo Puyo is still a pretty big series in its home country.
- The series has been going on since its inception, and shows no sign of coming to an end (outside of, say, Sonic Team being destroyed, but that's worst case scenario). It is both long-standing and relevant.
- Thanks to Puyo Puyo Tetris, she is nowhere near as much of an unknown over here as she used to be, although the series isn't very big here yet. Since that came out not too far away from Persona 5's English launch, I'd say it factors in. Thanks to Puyo Puyo being confirmed for SEGA Ages worldwide, at the very least SEGA now thinks Puyo in the west has a potential future, in case anybody thought that Puyo Tetris was a one-time thing, though this won’t specifically confirm her since it happens after eSports.
- Speaking of, because she's technically in a Tetris game, she can technically represent Tetris with a character without needing to do something incredibly crazy (though L block or Tetris Man work). She'd take priority over Ringo and Tee because they're not as iconic, nor as popular, and don't have legacy or as much to stand out with.
- She's got plenty to help her stand out from the crowd: magic is still a rarity among the cast, a chaining mechanic, Carbuncle, the titular Puyo, and that assumes Sega doesn't allow Sakurai to tap into Madou. With it, she's got lots of potential.
- Last and least, puzzle games are seriously hurting for characters, and we're more or less down to two at this point.
- eSports is irrelevant because Xenoblade 2 is too new by release date. If it were to matter, however, then it could potentially be a deciding factor.
Irrelevant points were: Assuming Nintendo would prioritize characters with good Nintendo history, as to not promote free advertising for Sony and Microsoft, and obviously every point related to the vacant slot in a SEGA character: since, you know,
. As well as her legacy except compared to other Puyo characters, since it seems like new faces are going to be dominant.
I'd say this totals her chance to about 20% in my eyes, since she has lots of good points, but the only major bad point couldn't possibly be worse.
Still, if we are going to get another SEGA rep, with one exception (anybody here know Yakuza? I’m not having that upset happen again), I have absolutely no doubts that it'd be Arle at this point. Joker's just kind of making it a hard sell. And unlike Tails, Arle has to get in ASAP, because if a Round 2 happens then she has to compete with him and Eggman again. A Round 3, she's almost guaranteed, but that's even assuming a round 2 happens, let alone a round 3 which is almost a farce.
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2424% (Pretend I said 100%)
Unlike my chance, this isn't dated! It's still here.
So. This is it. This is my most wanted character, BY FAR. BY ****ING FAR. Capping the score for want at 100% is bad for me because it’s a ****ing lie that implies I only want her a decent bit more than Banjo and Paper Mario. I’d ban them from ever being in Smash in a heartbeat if it guaranteed Arle. There is no competition here. There is nothing I wouldn’t sacrifice (short of critical gameplay mechanics) to get Arle in this game. I would let Patrick Star’s turds be playable in Smash as the main character and not give half a crap if Arle Nadja was playable. I draw the line at real life offensive stuff (even Arle couldn't soften that blow), but short of that, there’s nothing I’d never take if it meant getting Arle Nadja in, even Son Goku.
Her series deserves more love! That’s part of why I want it to happen. It’s quite fantastic, blending impressive competitive play with a fantastic cast of characters, (almost) all of them quite lovable or enjoyable. They’re the best. I’m not asking for a revival, though I am asking for more localizations...
In particular, make Puyo 2 the standard in the west. Mean Bean Machine and the other game that I’m about to get to use OPP rules, which are extremely dated and horribly represent the series today. Making them less of the standard would be much better.
I really really am a fan of the character. I like her personality. I like her abilities. There’s not much to say, you can’t change who you like, but Arle does bring a strong, sassy side that’s counterbalanced by being capable of genuine kindness and appreciation. She doesn’t take anybody’s ****. She’s good to her pet Carbuncle. She and the situations she gets in are hilarious.
ARLE. VS. KIRBY. This is a dream match for me, possibly around the level of Arle vs. Dr. Eggman, which is technically already possible in Puyo Puyo Quest. It’d be great whether you’d think she’d be out for revenge (like I do) or forgives him for what went down in 1995, which is that he stole her game. Remember the Avalanche? Or the Ghost Trap? That’s what I mean. Kirby’s Super Puyo Puyo Reskin apparently was just going to be Puyo 1 for the SNES before Compile (at the time, the dev team) was approached by Nintendo for the Kirby reskin process.
Y’know, this game could use more mages. Especially all around mages like Arle. The female newcomer selection is a little low right now, and all of them are based on other fighters (yes, Isabelle isn’t an echo, but it’s undeniable that she shares quite a bit with Villager). Arle’s got that covered, too, providing plenty of things to help her stand out.
Oh, and puzzle games are ****ing hurting, literally only having Dr. Mario, who is a clone. She might *not* count, as she herself hails from an RPG series, but she's more known for Puyo Puyo than Madou Monogatari, and that series isn't owned by Sega but by Compile Heart (basically Compile 2). So that'd be a fantastic hole to fix, and since I've never played a Layton game nor am I as interested in Panepon, Arle is my preferred choice.
My love letter to the series would be one that is very long, and respects the entirety of the Puyo Puyo franchise. This will be as involved and barking as I get. There’s nothing I want out of this game except Arle. With her, I will forgive every shortcoming. I will never ask for anybody ever again, I mean I'd continue to support Paper Mario and Banjo and everybody else but with her the roster's totally done. This is not hyperbole. If Arle gets in, I will personally apologise to every Joker main and purchase a copy of Persona 5 for every console I can, even ones I do not own, because I would be that sorry for all of my bitterness at Joker. [That second bit might be hyperbole.] Although that might not be good, because then if she were cut I'd flip. Also, K. Rool who? Olimar who? Mr. Game and Watch who? Insta-main, regardless of moveset functionality or playstyle.
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