A Top 10 for 100: Story Recommendations

After about 2 years, I’ve hit post number 100 on this blog. Obligatory reflections are as follows: This blog now contains about as many words as A Tale of Two Cities. To anyone and everyone who has ever stumbled upon this humble wordpress blog, thank you. To anyone and everyone who ever happens to stumble upon this humble wordpress blog from this day on, thank you. This place has only ever existed for me to practice an aspect of my art and to share what little I may claim to know about the art of storytelling with all of you.

Also, we’re nearly halfway through NaNoWriMo. How’s everyone’s 50k challenge going? I’ll front with you all, there’s some serious effort re-quadrupling that’s going to need to be done on my part.

Anyway, today I’m getting a little bit more personal. Today I offer you 10 of my favorite stories of all time. They have all been discussed at some length on this blog (save for one), so this will be a series of brief overviews of why I would recommend some of the things on here. The first five are in no real particular order, but you could say the last five will be essentially counting down my favorite stories with Number 1 being at the bottom. After 100 posts, let’s boogie!

10: Troy (2004 Film)

Not off to all that convincing a start are we? I’ve discussed the plot of this film at length a few months ago, and lost in all the babble about recreating myth in a historically plausible manner may have been the fact this is one of my 3 favorite movies all-time. Now before you storm off with what remains of my credibility, hear me out. As a history major, I found the manner in which the film was shot and the story told fascinating, considering our primary source of knowledge about the Trojan War is an epic poem, more rooted in myth than history. And before everyone gets their feathers ruffled, there is solid evidence that a war was fought around the city of Troy around the year 1200 BCE. Whether that means the Trojan War of myth actually happened, I’ll leave to you.

In addition to the myth building, the dialogue and monologues in this film are top notch. As soon as I hear Odysseus give that opening line: “All men are haunted by the vastness of eternity” I’m strapped in. If this film had released a couple years earlier, the fight scenes (particularly the large scale battles) would’ve been revolutionary (a la The Two Towers). As it stands, Troy does a fantastic job of fusing the grandiose battles that one would expect involving a war where a face launched a thousand ships, but also highlighting the duels and romantic vision of The Iliad.

9: The Invasion Cycle (Invasion (2000), Planeshift (2000), and Apocalypse (2001) Books)

For any of you Magic: The Gathering fans out there, back in the day every new expansion bloc had a novelized trilogy associated with it. Right around fifth grade, when I was first getting into MTG, I discovered this little dark fantasy saga, and my readings of not only The Invasion Cycle, but also The Onslaught Cycle, The Mirrodin Cycle, and The Kamigawa Cycle, have informed the types of stories I tend to tell ever since. Of these, Invasion and Mirrodin are my favorites, and for nostalgia purposes, let’s discuss the former rather than the latter.

As I mentioned above, The Invasion Cycle is firmly within the realm of dark fantasy. It is brutal, ugly, and at times downright depressing. Whereas Troy blends the poetic elements of war with a bit of the ugly reality, Invasion pulls no punches. Within the first two pages, you are thrust into the total war between the two planes of Dominaria and Phyrexia. The former contains everything that is beautiful about MTG, all the diversity (both beautiful and otherwise) and the latter contains monstrosities out of a realm of nightmares. There are reluctant heroes, all powerful planeswalkers, epic battle after epic battle, and a captured sense of what it might actually look like if two entire worlds went to war with one another. And yet, it’s the quiet moments where Invasion truly shines. While they don’t happen all that often, there’s a heart-wrenching look at infectious disease through the eyes of the main characters. There’s betrayal, there’s a series of questions regarding what is worth sacrificing to save what’s left. As action packed as it all is, The Invasion Cycle is a relatively quick read and comes with a recommendation from me, especially if you want to improve your action scenes and descriptive voice as a writer.

8: Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008 TV Series)

Back in the realm of familiarity for you long time readers. There is no family TV series I can praise more than The Last Airbender. With a plot straight out of the original Star Wars trilogy, a colorful cast of characters from multiple sides of the conflict, this show takes what Star Wars did well, and explores the themes a bit more deeply. It’s a show where you can see the characters’ growth from episode to episode, it’s not afraid to have its main characters fail, and in the end it has a powerful message regarding perseverance in the face of adversity, second and third chances, redemption, and the ultimate triumph of not only good over evil, but the triumph of right over wrong and justice over revenge. I’ve already typed out way too many words on this subject, so if you’re feeling adventurous, hunt down all the old pieces on this series on this blog.

7: Honey and Clover (2005-2006 Anime)

Despite my love of Shonen Battle animes like BLEACH and Akame ga Kill, my favorites are the quirky, borderline slice of life ones like Shokugeki no Soma and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. And my favorite of them all is Honey and Clover, which is full-on slice of life. The story of five kids at varying stages of their young lives going through art school and finding jobs and personal direction afterwards. My go to example for producing a story full of drama and emotion, without the presence of a single villain. There can’t even really be said to be an antagonist either (for you wisecracks who would point me in the direction of my own post on Princess Mononoke where I discussed the lack of villains there). If you’re looking for something to experience in a relaxing manner, where you can find high drama in a group of kids searching a clover patch for a four-leafed shamrock, this is the anime for you.

From a storytelling perspective, this is a prime example of a narrative that is entirely character driven. The only outside force acting upon the characters is the ever present forward march of time. And it’s a show that takes it’s time, but like life, it’s never going to let you linger in a moment for too long.

6: To the Moon (2011 Game)

Where do I even begin to express my love for this masterwork of the visual novel genre? To the point where I recommend it to non-gamers wholeheartedly and trampling over the “but really I don’t play video games” excuse. Play this one. It takes 4 hours. Come back to me when you’re done and we can share a box of tissues.

To the Moon is a tightly weaved story in the vein of Inception and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (both of those incidentally have my recommendation). It takes full advantage of the world it builds, namely the existence of a company that can go back and alter dying people’s memories to fulfill their final wishes. It avoids questions of morality and elects instead to focus on the mystery of one man’s life, namely: why does he want to go to the moon? For you writers out there, this is how you revolve a story around outside narrators who are simultaneously the protagonists of the story and not involved in any way. As beautiful as it is heartbreaking, tears will likely be shed, To the Moon can’t be praised enough from my point of view.

5: Final Fantasy X (2001 Game)

But my favorite game of all time has to go to the first Final Fantasy I played. As I replay it now, I’ve come to realize that Tidus’s narration throughout the game is actually spot on. It provides a sense of retrospect that by the time the final act comes around, the decisions that are made carry that much more gravity. At the same time, it never completely removes the player from the moment. It could almost be taken as his thoughts immediately following an event, which for someone who isn’t aware that he is, in fact, telling the story as the player plays it, keeps them from getting lost.

At the same time, FFX utterly nails pacing. It takes advantage of the fact that the player-characters are on an epic quest that spans their entire world. The amount of information and plot isn’t drip fed through player exploration and having to puzzle everything out yourself, but at the same time there are very few exposition dumps. Everything that can possibly be communicated through gameplay is. And to top it all off, for a 15 year-old game, the cut-scenes are to this day, extraordinary. In short, if you’ve got 40-60 hours to throw into something and care to know how to write a good epic, almost any Final Fantasy game can give you that. This just happens to be my choice.

4: The Scott Pilgrim Series (2004-2010 Graphic Novels)

While the film is a fantastic adaptation of the novels, it’s really more of an entry point to the series than anything else. It introduces you to the everyday, yet completely bonkers world that these characters inhabit. It covers the visual spectacle and the struggle of young adults trying to find their way in the world. But if it’s context, depth, and pacing you’re after, then the graphic novels are for you. The character development is sublime, the pacing between everyday drama and high-spectacle action is a thing of wonder, and by the end you will have a complete understanding of everyone involved in this saga, for better and for worse. Like what I said about FFX above, the graphic novels take advantage of the length they are allowed to make the reader feel the length of the journey. Entire characters and backstories that aren’t included in the movie can be found in the novels. Here, the fights against the evil exes are not the main attraction, but rather the climaxes of each episode. The lie and share of the pages you’ll flip through are day to day life more in the vein of Honey and Clover than BLEACH.

Of note here, pay attention to the balancing act between providing flashbacks and context, and actually pushing the story forward. Exposition is something that doesn’t need to come right away. It only needs to be known to the audience by the time it will be relevant. The trick is making the exposition entertaining without a flashback sequence coming out of nowhere. O’Malley nails it here.

3: Star Wars (1977-Ongoing Films, Books, Video Games, TV Series, etc.)

The first movies I can remember watching as a kid were the original Star Wars movies on VHS. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve watched them. I love the prequels too and the expanded universe books. I’ve played my share of Star Wars video games, watched my share of TV series, and have pretty much loved all of it. The amount of depth that has been put into this universe is something that no single individual can do. It is the result of not only George Lucas’s original vision, not just the additions made by Disney, but combined the efforts of thousands of fans producing their own content to flush out an entire galaxy worth of history, and millions more adding their thoughts and interpretations as well.

At the end of the day, the original trilogy is a fairly straight forward “I Am the One” arc plot. If you were to remove the setting and philosophies of the series, you’d have something that’s actually quite stale. So that means that the setting and themes are A+ grade and are worth studying for all you storytellers out there. As expanded upon in the prequels, Star Wars is less about the battle between good versus evil and more about the rise and fall and redemption of its characters. It’s more interested in the drama between its protagonists and antagonists than it is about the galactic conflicts happening all around them. It’s an important lesson in the value of producing a high quality world, but also creating higher quality characters to inhabit it.

2: Spirited Away (2001 Film)

For anyone who has skimmed just the titles of the posts that I… uh… post here, you should get a sense of the fascination that I have for this type of arc-plot. While not the first instance in the history of story telling of a character getting zipped away to another world and forced to find their way back home through myriad adversities, it is in my opinion the defining one. Everything about the story, the characters, the pacing, the visuals, the themes, is perfect. As we’ve progressed through this list, I’ve spotted a common theme in a lot of these recommendations: the storyteller takes their time. There is no rush to get to the end, no concern that the reader will get bored, but at the same time there is very little in the way of extra fat added on to fill out the story. Everything that is presented to the audience is to the betterment of the audience’s understanding of the world, characters, and circumstances that they find themselves is.

Furthermore, this is a movie of pure imagination, and it allows the audience to immerse themselves in it. Visually, this may be the most stunning movie I’ve ever seen (of course, I’m biased towards animated films so take that with however much salt you need). While the characters are colorful and fantastically realized, this is a story with a distinct focus on the journey, and overcoming all the trials the spirit world can possibly throw at you.  And it passes those trials with flying colors.

1: The Wheel of Time (1990-2012)

And despite all of that, my favorite story, the one that has most certainly influenced my writing the most over the years, is Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time. I’m not entirely sure where to begin, so I’ll start by pointing you to the handful of retrospectives (I’ll finish them someday, promise!) I’ve already posted here. This is a fantasy series that fuses everything about the high fantasy genre perfectly. From world-building, to character arcs, to political intrigue, explanation and exploration of everything other-worldly to the point where by the time you’re done it seems everyday. The Wheel of Time immersed me like no other book series ever has into its world. Phrases that out of context are little more than gibberish produced audible gasps, and to this day I’m convinced no one has mastered the art of the cliff-hanger to quite the extent of Robert Jordan. Furthermore, I have yet to find a story that uses prophecy to its advantage this much. Because of the story’s themes and nature of the world’s history, prophecy is able to be both completely accurate and completely surprising when it is fulfilled.

To compare to the flavor of the day, A Song of Ice and Fire: both Jordan and Martin produced incredibly detailed worlds, with deep history and varied cultures and characters. Suppose that the act of storytelling is like casting a net. The grander the story, the more characters, the bigger the net has to be to contain it all. The net is made of plot threads that must be navigated correctly or else you end up with a tangled net and muddled story. Martin has solved this problem by cutting the threads and killing characters, not to imply that this is wrong or an ineffective means of storytelling, but after a while you can’t help but wonder if such a grand net was needed in the first place. Jordan, with pretty much no exception, casts his net, flushes out his world, tells his story, and then pulls the net back in undamaged. Every single character has a complete arc, from the main character to a random palace guard you meet on one page in book 3.

Yeah. He comes back.

And it all makes perfect sense. That’s something I feel I can’t stop reemphasizing about The Wheel of Time. Every arc is natural. Yeah there are 14 books and some of them feel like not a whole lot is happening, but I can’t imagine the characters arriving at the endings they arrive at if even a single chapter were removed. And somehow, despite all the immersion, and all the prophecy, the ending is somehow a complete surprise while at the same time being completely in line with everything contained in those books.

So concludes this round of recommendations. Here’s to hoping I’ll have 10 more to provide 100 more posts down the line. Thanks again for reading. If you like what you find here, why not try and share it? Writing and storytelling tends to be a solitary act but you should never have to go it alone. I’ll see y’all next week for a return to business as usual.

In the meantime, I’ve got a few dozen… thousand… more words to write for NaNo. Happy writing!

The Role of Brotherhood (In Final Fantasy X)

Another quick hitter for y’all this week in the thread of small, symbolic moments in story telling. Wondering where that next Spirited Away piece is? Or the continuation of The Wheel of Time retrospective? How about the now mythically elusive Sports Masterpiece Theatre?

Yeah. Me too.

This week, it’s another 1 minute scene to dissect. It’s not even really about the scene. It’s an item, a sword to be specific. In a video game that’s not about samurai. We’re talking Tidus’s “Brotherhood” from Final Fantasy X, the one from the cover. What’s the big deal? It’s just a sword that becomes synonymous with the character using it. Like Cloud’s Buster Sword or Luke’s lightsaber.

Hold on a second. It’s true that Brotherhood is undoubtedly the most recognizable sword from this game, and it’s beautiful to look at. But unlike Cloud’s Buster Sword, this isn’t the weapon you start the game with in FFX. And if you play your cards right and are really good at Chocobo racing, it’s not the weapon that you’ll end the game with. Even though Luke lost his (arguably more iconic) blue lightsaber in Episode V, he came back in Episode VI with an even cooler looking green lightsaber. It sounds silly, but for kids watching that movie for the first time, a lot of us assumed lightsabers could only be blue or red and seeing green was mind blowing.

But to be fair, it is a weapon you’ll be using for 95% of the game. But you didn’t come here for a strategy guide. You came (in theory) to read a thing or two about story crafting elements. Well here are the notes on Brotherhood.

At the start of the game, during the fall of Zanarkand, Auron gives Tidus a sword to defend himself with. I couldn’t tell you it’s name, you use it for all of 2 hours, which for a JRPG is no time at all. After the Prologue and the section of the game I have affectionately dubbed “Chapter 0,” you wash up on Besaid and meet your first permanent party member in Wakka. Some conversations are had, some other party members are met, and he gives you a sword named “Brotherhood.” He doesn’t say it, it’s not mentioned for another hour still, and you wouldn’t even know its name unless you deliberately go to the menu to look. And even that’s not strictly necessary. It’s automatically equipped for you, replacing whatever no name weapon Auron gave you.

Naturally, we’re going to get into the symbolism of this moment. The sword’s name could on a very superficial level refer to the bond you will share with Wakka and your other companions through the remainder of the game. That one’s a little obvious and the next one is spelled out for you. Through numerous discussions during the game about Wakka’s deceased brother, you learn that the sword had originally been a gift from Wakka to his brother, but it was never used.  Between the sword, blitzball, and Tidus apparently looking a bit like said brother, it could be inferred that Wakka is himself going on a journey to finally move on from his brother’s death.

But it goes even deeper than that. Brotherhood is Tidus’s possession. It is his sword, and it’s the first thing he’s given upon coming to this new world. Yes he had his initial lonely encounter in Chapter 0, but now the ground seems somewhat stable beneath his feet, there are people he’s okay traveling with, and all in all he’s able to forget about Zanarkand. He’s becoming a part of this world, slowly yet surely.

And so we throw a unique element into the Spirited Away format. A symbolic belonging that connects the main character to someone or something in this other world. Spirited Away didn’t have this element. While Chihiro does receive a gift from the River Spirit, it’s the last we see of said spirit. She gets nothing from Haku or Lin who are her lasting connections in this world. The same can be said for Kyon’s experience in The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. It’s the symbolic link to the other world at the expense of the sword he was using to escape from his home.

So even at this early moment in the game, we have (at least at the subconscious level) the main character accepting some of the identity destruction I like to harp on in these types of stories. But doesn’t that change the narrative a bit? If the identity reconstruction is already happening in what is effectively Chapter 1, doesn’t that alter a narrative from a Spirited Away arc to more of an I Am the One arc? The key word at the top of this paragraph is ‘subconscious.’ This sword isn’t the end of the transformation, but only the very beginning. It’s a beginning that the main character isn’t even aware of. A seed planted in the back of his mind that can grow and flourish over the next 40 hours.

It’s said that in a play if a gun is placed over the mantle, it must go off at some point in the play. There are multiple variations of this saying, but the point is if you’re going to present a tool and use it throughout the story, it must have a payoff. As the seed that allows Tidus to take root in this new world and come to care about others on his quest to get back home, to second guess this desire to leave when all is said and done (a desire the player will probably share), I’d say Brotherhood has this payoff.

Final Fantasy X’s “Chapter 0”

Returning from a much needed vacation, let’s jump back in right away with a brief discussion regarding the opening hour of Final Fantasy X. Format-wise, this particular story features something rarely seen in fiction: the elusive chapter 0. In fiction, particularly fantasy, if a story features a prologue it is likely to cover events that are relevant but occur before the primary story. They tend to take place either far in the past (relative to the amount of time that elapses over the course of the story), in a distant locale (relative to where the main characters begin the story), or featuring characters that aren’t the main character (such as ambiguous characters or antagonists). Most prologues then end with a dramatic cut, at peak action, and the tension backs off as the story begins with chapter 1. The purpose is to hook the reader with intrigue and to demonstrate the dangers present in the world or the nature of characters that inhabit said world.

So what makes the introduction of FFX so interesting? There are two prologues.

Sort of.

The game opens with our main character living his life in the advanced machina city paradise of Zanarkand. Over the course of about ten minutes, Sin shows up, destroys the city, and our lead character (Tidus) finds himself alone in the frigid ruins of a sunken temple. Seems fit for a prologue right? A high action opener leading into a more solemn, quiet chapter 1.

To summarize quickly, Tidus meets Rikku and the al-Bhed who we are able to gather are a group of wandering scavengers, seeking out the ruins of the ancient, long destroyed machina cities to recover their lost treasures. They speak a foreign language, save for Rikku who can communicate with Tidus and we come to figure that the world we now find ourselves in is probably the same world we came from, just many many years in the future. Tidus agrees to work for them in order to get food and shelter. And really, where else is he going to go?

Well it turns out, after a first job well done, Sin shows up again, knocking our main character overboard into a nameless sea where once again the story cuts.

The next ‘chapter’ of our story opens with Tidus washing up on the island of Besaid where he meets Wakka, and our story takes on a less blackout/cut-happy format of progression.

So what’s the point of this second prologue, this chapter 0 if you will? Nothing important is accomplished. If we look at how the rest of the story pans out, it introduces a character that comes back a ways down the line, introduces a group of people that Tidus doesn’t directly interact with for quite some time. That’s it. Wouldn’t the story work just as well if we were to cut this part of the story and just skip from Sin destroying Zanarkand straight to Tidus washing up on Besaid?

From a plot perspective, yes. If this were a book, this Rikku/al-Bhed passage probably wouldn’t work.

However, FFX is able to leverage the fact that it is a video game rather than another medium. Because Tidus is the player-character, the audience is likely to more quickly empathize with his character, more easily put themselves in his shoes. This allows the audience to experience the turbulence of being thrust in a new world and being unable to stick with it. To be tossed around, to fear that at any moment you could be swept away. It’s something the game toys with further down the line. Because yes, this isn’t the last time that Tidus gets swept away and finds himself alone and washed up on some alien shore. It’s just the next one doesn’t come for quite some time. And there’s a fakeout somewhere along the line.

The fakeout, and the fact that this doesn’t happen again until about the midway point of the game is what differentiates this as a chapter 0 rather than just as a chapter 1. Too much time passes after the Zanarkand opener to call this sunken ruin a continuation of the prologue. And too much changes between this section and Besaid to simply call it a chapter 1. While this isn’t the last time Tidus washes up somewhere, it is the last time that literally everything changes when he does wash up.

Perhaps the final question that needs to be answered is why I’m dubbing this a “Chapter 0” rather than a “Prologue 2?”

You know, besides the fact that Chapter 0 sounds better. It’s more…. mysterious.

Because the portion of the story with Rikku is much more like the rest of the game that follows rather than the part of the game that came before. For reasons I’m really not going to get into here because spoilers. In short, while in both instances the locale and familiar faces (if faces can become familiar after only 10-15 minutes) are replaced, Wakka’s world is much more similar to Rikku’s world than it is to Tidus’s, the primary non-spoilery reason being that it’s in the same time period. From Zanarkand to the sunken temple, close to 1000 years has passed. From the sunken temple to Besaid, we lost… a day? Maybe?

For further playing (look, I looked – not very hard but still – for another example of a Chapter 0 but this is literally the best one I can think of so):

Final Fantasy X (2001) – Playstation 2

Plotting the Spirited Away Arc Plot, Part II: “Final Fantasy X”

Part 2 of this multipart (it’s gonna end up being longer than 3) “Spirited Away” arc plot series will cover Final Fantasy X. And anti-organized religion symbolism aside, our main character Tidus finds himself in very much the same boat as Chihiro from Spirited Away. Amusingly enough, FFX came out in the same year as Spirited Away and carries with it many similar themes regarding identity construction, guides, leading of events into each other to construct narrative, and our hero lacking a special power.

Once again, if you missed the first piece on this arc plot (first of all, check it out!): full disclosure, Final Fantasy X is one of my favorite games of all time. It’s honestly between this one and Persona 3 (are you detecting a theme on what my favorite types of games are?).

A minor note about the plot of FFX: from the start, the story is narrated by Tidus retrospectively. So despite the fact the game has a narrator, we remain acutely unaware of anything Tidus was or is (whenever it is he’s narrating this to us) unaware of.

Let’s get into it! Our main character Tidus lives in an advanced machina (machine) city. The machina cities are described as being places where the people could relax and play all day and all night while the machines did all the work. Tidus is the star player of the local blitzball team (best minigame in any game ever by the way) and is living a life of luxury and fame. There are undertones of a rough relationship with his father (who’s presumed dead), but that’s not important here. Anyway, our hero goes to the stadium to play his game, but the city is attacked by the monster, Sin. We meet Tidus’s first guide, Auron (who has been watching over the protagonist since his father disappeared). As Sin destroys the city around them, Auron and Tidus are lifted up into a time vortex and are separated.

A little bit more on Auron. If the name rings a bell, it’s because I mentioned him off hand in the Spirited Away piece alongside names like Gandalf and Moraine. Like Haku in Spirited Away, Auron speaks somewhat cryptically when we first encounter him. He actually guides Tidus to Sin and leads him through the time vortex. From Tidus’s (and our) point of view, this is a very counter-intuitive thing to do considering the massive monster is destroying everything and killing everyone.

Back to the story: Tidus wakes up to find himself in the ruins of an ancient temple, and like Chihiro in Spirited Away, completely alone and confused. After a short while he encounters his second guide, Riku. Whereas Auron is a guide of destiny (always telling Tidus “This is your story”), Riku is a guide to the way the world is. She introduces us to the history of the world, the destruction of the machina cities, Sin, the different cultures, languages, and so on. She informs Tidus the city he claims to be from was destroyed 1,000 years ago and advises him not to talk about stuff like that. And so already we are encountered with the first bits of identity deconstruction.

Anyway, Sin attacks, Tidus gets separated from Riku, and washes up on an island where we finally get a little sense of stability. Throughout this first hour or so of the game, we have been having characters come into and leave our party, gone from one place to another with the only interludes being blackouts. So we constantly have to relearn where we are, what we’re doing, etc.

On this island (Besaid) we meet the bulk of our party for the remainder of the game: guardians Lulu, Wakka, Kimahri and summoner Yuna. Conveniently enough, Wakka is a blitzball player like Tidus and invites him to travel with them to a major tournament where hopefully Tidus can find someone he knows. Like Riku, this group advises him not to talk about the city he’s from (because saying you’re from the city of the dead is kind of crazy). The exception here is Yuna, who knew Tidus’s father. Turns out when he vanished all those years ago, he came through a similar time vortex and ended up in the same world we did.

So the gang heads off straight to this blitzball tournament to get Tidus home right? No. There are stops to be made along the way because Yuna (as a summoner) must go on a pilgrimage to learn all of the summons and defeat Sin. And in this time, Tidus gets to know the group, crushes on Yuna for a bit, and begins to construct his new identity for this new world.

Two things here. First, on the theme of guides: Wakka, Lulu, and Kimahri are the guides to the world in regards to ideology. Their faith gives them a certain view for the way things ought to be, and makes for some entertaining interactions when Riku (who doesn’t share in this faith) and Auron (who is disillusioned) rejoin the party for good. Secondly, we should note how changing circumstances impact a character’s identity and desires. We didn’t see this so much in Spirited Away because Chihiro was a human, and it was unnatural for her to stay in the bathhouse of the spirits. But in FFX, Tidus is just another human in a world full of humans (not exclusively, but mostly). He’s able to build lasting relationships and these weigh heavily on the scale against going back home.

When they finally reach the blitzball tournament, Tidus learns that the world is too different from the one he knew. There is no easy way home, so the best course of action is to stick with the group. With the end of the tournament, he discards one of the last remaining pieces of his former identity (the role of a blitzball superstar) to pick up a new identity (as one of Yuna’s guardians). Yes you can continue to play blitzball, but it’s not relevant to the plot. He doesn’t give up on getting home, but he concludes his best bet of getting home is sticking with this group. Also, the goal becomes modified from: get back home, to: get back home with Yuna and show her the awesome city he’s from.

Of course there are major plot twists from here to the end, but as usual I encourage you to experience them for yourself. Besides, the main plot has already been summarized as far as you need to know. Protagonist gets sent away to an alien world, deals with issues of identity destruction and reconstruction, meets guides along the way, and through a series of episodes and misadventures tries to defeat whatever needs defeating (in this case Sin), with the ultimate goal of getting back home. The sense of progression in this game comes from acquiring the summons, each of which is more powerful than the last. Combine that with having to take down tougher and tougher monsters on your journey across the world to defeat Sin itself and you have yourself a story that maintains interest. There’s that same, major goal in the distance (go home). But there’s also getting down the Mihen Highroad, learning the Ixion summoning, crossing the Moonflow, meeting with a Maester, crossing the Thunderplains, then Macalania forest, then Lake Macalania, then learning to summon Shiva, then you’re lost in a desert…. You get it. Each episode pulls you along to the next.

For further playing: Final Fantasy X (PlayStation 2, 2001)