Trails to Azure and heroic hypocrisy (long post)

Earlier this year I played the Trails in the Sky trilogy and by the end of it I was looking forward to continuing the series. Fast forward a few months to this sunday when I finished Trails to Azure. Once again I enjoyed my time with the characters and the story, although to a lesser extent. And while I was perfectly satisfied and ready to move on from the previous arc, Azure’s ending left me wondering if something went wrong with the story or if I’m missing the point.

After all, am I wrong or do the heroes actually end up being kind of hypocritical? I will try to explain my point in this post.

So what is the problem? The very end of the game, as in the last room you enter, is packed with information. Too packed, in fact. We get major bombs dropped on the party of heroes, one of which should throw a major wrench at everything they believe in. And yet it gets side-stepped like nothing.

Let’s do a quick recap. When Lloyd and co arrive to face the final boss, Ian and Bell finally reveal their whole plan. The Azure-Zero project involves using KeA’s ability to remake the world into a peaceful paradise, essentially erasing all the pain and loss they have gone through. The heroes are understandably doubtful that such a thing would be even possible, but there is a twist. It already happened.

In what should be a devastating gut-punch, a complete knock out from Bell on the heroes, she reveals that they already died once. When Lloyd and co. faced Joachim “mega creep” Guenter in the previous game they were supposed to die. KeA used her powers to alter reality into one where they had the help of Joshua, Estelle and Renne, therefore saving their lives.

Now why should this revelation be so devastating? Aside from the fact they were supposed to be dead, that is. Because this single fact not only greatly supports the argument that the villains’ plan actually CAN work, it also goes against the heroes’ entire philosophy. And the real problem is not the revelation itself, but how it gets addressed by the characters, or better, not addressed at all by the characters. They all barely acknowledge it before moving on and dodging the issue entirely. Let me explain how this is wrong.

Following this massive revelation Lloyd and friends present 2 main arguments against the Azure-Zero project:

1: The villains want to change reality by exploiting KeA’s power. This would put too much of a burden on this young girl, depriving her of the freedom to live a normal life. Basically she would be a sacrifice, having to shield all of humanity from suffering for eternity. And that’s just not cool.

Plus this is already proven to be a bad idea, since KeA’s predecessor in the role, the Sept-Terrion of Mirage couldn’t handle the burden and erased its own existence.

At first this argument seems solid. After all, this kind of burden would be too much for anyone to handle. Ian rebukes it by saying they have no intention of letting KeA handle it alone, as he would offer guidance and bring in more people to help, such as Ellie’s grandpa and even the heroes themselves could join.

So in this regard both sides seem to have reasonable arguments, right? Kinda. The problem with Ian’s idea is that it is inherently flawed in many ways. It is immensely arrogant of him to think that he and a handful of people would be enough to stop KeA from losing her mind due to the insurmountable burden of shaping reality on a large scale. This kind of thing has already been attempted before, more than once. Why is he so confident he would succeed where others failed?

Lloyd and co. probably don’t know the details of the Aureole incident, but everyone is aware of the fall of the ancient civilization and how advanced they were before the collapse. Sure, KeA’s powers are proven to work, but changing reality to save a handful of lives is one thing, changing the entire world for everyone is a whole different thing.

Ian and Bell have no way to guarantee for sure that their plan works, that over time KeA wouldn’t suffer the same fate as her predecessor. Even with help the burden might just be impossible for anyone to handle, let alone a young girl, which at the end of the day is what KeA is. Eventually it could all fall apart. It is delusional of them to think otherwise and in the end they would only be sacrificing KeA for nothing but their own self-satisfaction.

However, Lloyd makes none of these arguments. Instead he shifts back to appealing to his own sentimentality and moral view, which in turn create problem number two.

2: Lloyd and friends go on a rant about how they shouldn’t change reality and erase the pain and suffering people have gone through. People’s experiences, both good and bad, are what makes them who they are. It is by facing life’s adversities that people can grow and change. Denying them that opportunity is bad, because that’s what makes them people. Everyone has the right to decide how to live their lives instead of relying on a deity to solve all their problems. A big ol’ suffering builds character speech basically.

In theory this all sounds great. Free will, and growing as people as we overcome the barriers of life. Here is the thing... If that's the case, if they really believed that, then they should accept that they already died and none of the events that happened during the last few months should have happened.

But they somehow just ignore that almost completely. Insisting that relying on KeA to solve their problems isn’t right. They even acknowledge that the coming conflicts that this choice will bring will be full of pain and death, all the while not addressing the fact that if that’s the case they should be dead!

And in a moment that left me completely bewildered is that this load of hypocritical bullshit somehow works! And Ian gets convinced and gives up his plan! A man, who by the way was so assured of his plan, that he shot Guy in the back with the full confidence he would one day be brought back to life. And Guy wasn’t just some guy(hehe), they were close friends.

How does this happen? Ian is supposed to be smart, Bell is supposed to be smart and even more invested into this plan and neither of them try to argue against Lloyd. Either of them could easily dismantle his argument by simply reminding him of the fact that he already died. That by “saving” KeA he would be dooming thousands of innocents to die in the coming conflicts, not only the immediate ones in Crossbell either, but ALL future conflicts. So how can they believe that stopping them is the right thing to do while they remain alive themselves?

Here is the truth. They already failed, they died. Full stop. They died, and if not for KeA they would have remained dead and buried. But do they bring that up? No. Do they do the logical thing and tell KeA to revert reality to the one where they died? No. They happily keep on living their God-given, reality warping second chance at life while denying everyone else the same thing.

Why can they have a second chance and nobody else? What about Arios? Doesn’t he deserve to have his wife back? Can’t Shizuku ever see her mother again? KeA can change reality to get her found family back but not for Ian to have his family returned to him?

If the heroes really wanted to, they could stay true to their ideals. Personally I don’t fault them for choosing to stay alive. But by not acknowledging that doing so is hypocritical and goes against everything they stand for, everything they say is just empty, self-righteous bullshit. They doom everyone to suffer along with them in the coming conflicts needlessly.

They can’t both accept that they’re alive, benefiting from KeA changing reality for the better and therefore proving that the villains are actually on to something, while at the same time denying the same opportunity for everyone else because of some “suffering builds character“ bullshit. How can they say that reality changing power = bad with a straight face after knowing that they fucking died? They come off as incredible hypocrites, and I think the writers knew that when making this stuff up.

Honestly, why is this even a thing? Why have this plot point at all? Even though it is something that should be a critical revelation to all the heroes it gets quickly brushed to the side in the already bogged down ending with the exposition dump and holier than thou rhetoric of the heroes.

This single fact goes almost unaddressed by all of the characters, while it should have been treated as one of the most important events of the entire story. The reality is the heroes failed, they died and should have stayed dead. But we just move on from that like it’s nothing. So, why? Why is this a thing? Remove this event and absolutely nothing changes. In fact it would only strengthen the heroes' arguments against the villains. So why add it?

The writers probably thought it sounded cool and either never realized how bad it makes the heroes sound after the fact or noticed it and decided to ignore it anyway, since it would have absolutely bogged the pacing of the ending even more.

Also, the ending of Trails in the Sky SC has a very similar scenario, with Weissmann, the OG creep, wanting to control all of humanity by becoming a god. But in that game the heroes actually aren’t caught in a contradiction by opposing his plan because their beliefs are supported by what they have experienced before facing him. In Azure everything they have experienced was only possible BECAUSE KeA saved them. They didn’t overcome the barriers of life by coming together to face adversity, they failed! So if their argument is true then the world should have moved on without them.

Anyway, that’s my long winded rant on how Lloyd and co. are possibly unintentionally written as hypocrites by the writers because they thought the “the heroes actually died before” twist sounded cool without thinking of the ramifications of that plot point.

Side note: Orouboros really looked at the reality warping god tree child and said “yeah, that’s fine we don’t need to worry about that. Let’s go to the empire.” Like, hello? That child can change the entire reality bro, aren’t you at least a little bit concerned? The only plausible scenario here is that if the Grandmaster can actually predict the future or is already aware of what happens. Because how else would you not be at least a bit worried about it?

My theory is the Grandmaster is actually a multi-versal Estelle who has experienced countless timelines and knows how everything plays out. Kinda cliché these days isn’t it?

Side note 2: the writers are cowards. How is it that you can only get 1 of the final bonding events per playthrough while also being able to get them all to max level? At every opportunity in both games they tease Lloyd as being this oblivious harem protagonist type of guy, with multiple girls pining for him and we can’t get the harem ending? FUCK OFF MAN I CAN’T CHOOSE WHO THE BEST GIRL IS. I DON’T CARE THAT ELLIE IS THE CANON ENDING I WANT RIXIA AND NOEL TOO GOD DAMN IT!!! Also Cecile.